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#tte fumtlt^tt antf |Jfttrth ginniw^atij), 



November 24 and 25, 1869. 



MEMORIAL. 




" They shall still bring forth fruit in old age." 



PUBLISHED FOR THE SESSION, 
BY JENNINGS BROTHERS, PRINTERS, NEWARK, N. J. 

187 0. 



PT, 



/ '44- 



L^ 



In Exchansre. 



21 S '08 




'Of), that I were an 'Vrange tree, 

Tb<^t busy plant ! 
Then should X ever laden he, 

^nd never want 
Some fruit for Jlim that dresseth rne. 

George Herbebt. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Introduction. 
II. Sermon, by Rev. E. Mix, Pastor. 

in. Inauguration of Mural Tablet, by Rev. W. 
H. Green, D. D. 

rV. Historical Discourse, by Rev. E. 11. Gil- 
LETT, D. D. 

V. Poem, by A. D. F. Randolph, Esq. 

VI, Rev. James Hoyt, with Recollections of his 
Pastorate, by Stephen Wickes, M. D. 



I. 

IHTR^ODUCTIOl^ 

BY THE 

COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 







"The Lord our God be with us, as He was with our 
fathers. Let Him not leave us nor forsake us; that He 
nnay incline our hearts unto Him, to walk in all His 
ways, and to keep His commandments, and His statutes, 
and His judgments, which He commanded our fathers." 

I. Kings, viii: 57, 58. 




INTRODUCTION. 




HE preliminary steps for the commemoration of 
the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of 
the First Church of Orange, were taken by its 
Session on the 17th of June, 1868. 

A Committee, appointed at that time, reported in due 
season a circular of invitation to those interested in the past 
history of the Church, and an order of exercises for the anni- 
versary occasion, which was formally adopted. 

The circular was issued in the month of October, and was 
as follows : ' 

The First Presbyterian Church of Orange closes with the present year the 
One Hundred and Fiftieth of its existence as a Church Organization. Its Officers 
and Members deem the event worthy of special remembrance, recalling, as it does, 
the goodness of God which has distinguished its history in the past, and inviting us to 
celebrate His mercies in the undiminished vigor and prosperity of its old age. 

We propose to celebrate the Anniversary of its foundation on the 24M and 2si/i 
days of November jiext ; and we cordially invite all its sons and daughters, and all 
others who, in any way, are associated with its history, to unite with us on that occa- 
sion in COMMEMORATIVE RELIGIOUS SERVICES, AND SOCIAL CHRISTIAN REUNION. 

Our hearts and homes will be open to all those whose past history has inspired 
them with a love for our Zion, and sympathy in its welfare. 
We invite a reply from you at your earliest convenience. 

Eldridge Mix, Pastor, 
Stephen Wickes, 
Henry N. Beach, 
Orange, Oct. 6, 1S69. Committee 0/ Session. 



10 FIRST CEWRCE, ORANGE. 

The Exercises on the 24th and 25th of November were in 
accordance with the Programme, which was printed for the 
occasion : 



P^oq^^^|vi|yi E. 



iSH^II ^xtnlni^, 7-1 0'.d.o; 



Voluntary By Choir. 

INVOCATION. 
Opening Hymn By Rev, W. Bradley.* 

Eternal, ever gracious God, Our fathers' God we own as ours. 

The portion, and unfailing trust Nor would we ingrate children prove ; 

Of worthies, who this ground once trod, But consecrate to Thee our powers. 

But now are sleeping in the dust. In steadfast faith and earnest love. 

Those noble men we honor still, O help us celebrate this day. 

Who 'mid privations, toils and fears, That crowns the hundred Jijiieih year. 

Their high commission did fulfill — And while we wait, and praise, and pray. 

Foundations laid for future years. Reveal Thy gracious presence here. 

READING OF SCRIPTURE. 

PRAYER. 

HYMN. 

Sermon By Rev. E. Mix, Pastor. 

INAUGURATION OF THE MEMORIAL TABLET 

OF 

Rev'ds Dan'i- Tati.or and Caleb Smith, nv Rev. W. Henry Green, D. D., 
A lineal descendant of the latter. 

DOXOLOGY AND BENEDICTION. 

* A Member of the Congregation. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 



, 3 ^'tUtl, i. p. 



Psalm go. — From Rev. Cotton Mather's Colleftions, 1718. 

Lord, Thou hast evermore to us || an habitation been, || from one Age to another 
Age II sweetly protecting' IIS. \\ 

Before the Mountains were brought forth || or Thou hadst formed the earth || and 
world, even from Age to Age || Thou art the Mighty God. || 

To them that are thy Servants now l| O let thy work be seen ; |I thy glory also 
unto those || that are thy children here. || 

And let the lovely brightness of || the Lord who is our God, || with a conspicuous 
lustre be \\ seen shining upon us ; || and the work of our hands, do Thou || establish 
upon us; || yea, the work of our hands do Thou || firmly establish it. || 

PRAYER. 
Psalm 48 From Tate & Brady's Colleftion. 

My soul for help on God relies, 

From Him alone my safety flows : 
My Rock, my health that strengtli supplies. 

To bear the shock of all my foes. 

God does His saving health dispense, 

And flowing blessings daily send ; 
He is my fortress and defence, 

On Him my soul shall still depend. 

In Him, ye people, always trust, 

Before His throne pour out your hearts ; 
For God, the merciful and just, 

His timely aid to us imparts. 

Historical Discourse By Rev. E. H. Gillett, D. D. 

CORONATION HYMN. 
BENEDICTION. 



12 FIEST CEURCH, ORANGE. 



Voluntary By Choir. 



PRAYER. 



Poem, 



By a. D. F. Randolph, Esq. 

DISCOURSE. 

Rev. James HoyT, with Recollections of his Pastorate, 

By Stephen WiCKES, M. D., Member of Session. 

Closing Hymn By Rev. W. Bradley. 



Our gracious God and Saviour, 

In closing, help us raise 
To Thee our hearts and voices 

In thankfulness and praise. 
We thank Thee for our Birthright 

As children of the Free ! 
And all our common blessings. 

Which come direct from Thee. 

For this enjoyed re-union 

Of cherished. Christian friends : 
For every reminiscence 

Which, in its nature tends 
To bind our hearts together. 

And make us truly one : 
For this delightful service. 

Like Heaven on earth begim, 

We offer our thanksgivings 
With earnest heart and voice : 

We sing of thy salvation. 
And in thy strength rejoice. 



We thank Thee for the Fathers- 
Fox all their work well done. 
And all they le/t unfinished ; 
A work for us begun. 

May "i-ve be found as faithful — 

As steadfast and as true — 
The glory of the Master 

Our highest end in view. 
And when our work is finished. 

And we go home to rest. 
With transport and with wonder 

We'll sing among the blest. 

And now to God our Father, 

And God, His only Son, 
And God, the Holy Spirit — 

The Blessed Three in One ; 
Whom Saints delight to honor, 

And angels all adore ; 
Be glory, praise and blessing. 

For ever, evermore. 



RE-UNION IN LIBRARY HALL. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

The interior of the church was appropriately decorated 
with evergreens, two shields being placed on either side of the 
facade above and back of the pulpit, with the figures in ever- 
green, " 1719," " 1869." The outer border of the reading 
desk was trimmed with lichens gathered from the ancient 
headstones of the old parish burying place ; and an anchor 
was attached to the centre front made from the same, taken 
from the monuments of the first two ministers of the church. 

During the services of the second evening, the pastor, after 
the reading of the poem, led forward on his arm the venerable 
Cyrus Jones, Esq., a native of Orange, and introduced him to 
the assembly as the oldest member of the church, and the oldest 
citizen of the town, being in the one hundredth year of his 
age. The congregation, rising, at the suggestion of the pastor, 
sang, "Praise God," &c., to the tune of " Old Hundred." 

The following report of the original Committee of Arrange- 
ments was presented to the Session, and adopted on the 28th 
of December, 1869 : 

Your Committee would respectfully report, that according to previous arrange- 
ments, the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of this Church was celebrated on 
the 24th and 25th days of November ; the exercises consisting of a sermon by the 
Pastor; an historical discourse, by Rev. E. H. Gillett, D. D. ; an inaugural address, 
at the unveiling of the tablet commemorating the first two ministers of the church, by 
Rev. W. Henry Green, D. D. ; a history of the ministry of Rev. James Hoyt, by 
Stephen Wickes, M. D. ; and a poem by A. D. F. Randolph, Esq. ; concluded 
by a re-union in Library Hall. 



14 FIRST CnURCH, ORANQE. 

Your Committee propose the adoption of the following Resolution, and its trans- 
mbsion to each of the persons named, not connected with the Church, who added so 
greatly to the interest of the occasion : 

Resolved, That the grateful acknowledgments of this Church are due, and in its 
behalf, and as its representatives, we do hereby tender them to Rev. E. H. Gillett, 
D. D., and Rev. W, Henry Green, D. D., for their valuable addresses, and to A. D. 
F. Randolph, Esq., for his excellent poem, so kindly prepared and delivered at our 
One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary ; and also request a copy of the same for 
publication. 

The sermon by the Pastor of the church, and the discourse 
on the pastorate of the Rev. J.ames Hoyt, were also requested 
for publication, and the original Committee of Arrangements 
were appointed by the Session a Committee of Publication. 




II. 



REV. ELDRIDGE MIX, 

Pastor of the Chuech. 



"That the generations to come might know them, 
even the children which should be born, who should 
arise and declare them to their children, that they 
might set their hope in God and not forget the works 
of God, but keep His commandments." 

rsALM Ixxviii : c, 7. 



SERMON. 



Exodus xii : 26 — " What mean ye h/ this service ?" 




commemorate important events of 
the past, is both natural and every way 
befitting. The citizens of a nation which 
they love, whose name is their boast, and whose 
history is their pride, are prompted, as if by 
instinct, and by a sense of what is becoming, in 
some suitable manner, gratefully to celebrate the 
event which gave it birth, and trace, with thankful 
heart, its growth and prosperity, from that begin- 
ning. How instinctive, and proper also, the com- 
memoration of birth-days, or of any event of 
great significance in our history, such as some 
remarkable turning-point therein, a crisis of future 
destiny, the dawn of a new era in the ongoing of 
our life, a providential deliverance from some 
unforeseen peril. 



18 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

Ill obedience to this natural prompting, you find 
commemorative days, and seasons, set apart, and 
in some way observed by nations, by social organi- 
zations of whatsoever kind they may be, and by 
individuals everywhere. It is not without its most 
salutary and beneficial efl:ects. Greatly to be de- 
plored would be its abandonment, for any cause, 
when the event is worthy of commemorating, to 
which any given observance relates. For example, 
who would be content to have the anniversary of 
the birth of this republic, under which we live, 
pass by unnoticed and disregarded, and the mem- 
ory of that great event in our national history be 
suffered to grow dim, and gradually fade out of 
the distinct recollection of the people, even though 
there is much connected with its observance which 
we could wish otherwise ? "Would it not be an 
incalculable loss to us, as a nation, not to have those 
stirring scenes and solemn transactions which clus- 
ter about the declaration of our independence, to- 
gether with the sublime devotion, the heroic faith, 
and the fearless courage of those who were actors 
in that event, kept in remembrance? Is it not 



8EBM0N. 19 

wise to set apart a day to remind of these things 
which are such an inspiration to true patriotism, 
and are so well fitted to incite fidelity in the dis- 
charge of the sacred trust reposed in us ? 

Indeed, in olden time, among God's people, the 
commemoration of past events in their national his- 
tory was deemed of too much importance to be left 
to the prompting of their feelings, or to their own 
regulation in any way whatever. It was solemnly 
and authoritatively enjoined, and the precise man- 
ner in which the ceremonies of such occasions 
should be conducted was prescribed. The Old 
Testament is largely made up of history, which 
was to be the continual study of the Israelites, in 
order that they might never forget what God had 
wrought in their behalf; and there were days set 
apart not unfrequently in the course of each year, 
by divine command, to be employed in celebrating 
the more important events with which their history 
was filled. 

There was one event, especially, which was never 
to be forgotten — that which gave to the Israelites 
their national existence. Though it was true, as 



20 FIEST CEimCE, ORANGE. 

another has said of it, that " no subsequent vicissi- 
tudes would obliterate the story which Israel trea- 
sured in her inmost memory, the story of the stern 
Egyptian bondage, followed by the triumphant 
exodus, yet everything was done by God to keep it 
fresh in their remembrance, and most effective in 
its influence over them." " It is not enough," this 
same writer adds, " that this great deliverance be 
accurately chronicled ; it must be expanded, ap- 
plied, insisted on in each of its many bearings and 
aspects by the law-giver who directed and described 
it ; it must be echoed on from age to age, in the 
stern expostulations of prophets, and in the plaint- 
ive or jubilant songs of psalmists." Nor yet is 
this enough ; but the feast of the Passover, com- 
memorative of this event, must be duly observed 
with every returning year. When the time for it 
came, there must be an entire interruption of the 
ordinary routine of family life, a clearing of the 
house of all leaven, and the slaying of the firstling 
of the flock, to be roasted and eaten at night, witli 
the loins girded, feet shod, and staff in hand, and 
the blood of the victim was to be sprinkled upon 



SERMON. 21 

the door-posts. This would naturally provoke the 
inquiry, on the part of the children of each suc- 
ceeding generation, " What mean ye by this ser- 
vice ?" To this question, thus elicited, explicit 
answer was to be given, detailing the great event 
which it was designed to commemorate. 

So that it is in obedience to a natural prompt- 
ing of our hearts, and moved also by a sense of 
what is befitting, but most of all instructed by pre- 
cept and example in God's word, though not di- 
rectly commanded, that we as a church are about 
to commemorate its founding a century and a half 
ago, and associate with that event a consideration 
of the time and circumstances in which it began its 
existence, and has developed itself, as well as make 
a compilation of its written history until the present 
time. And there is special reason for the commem- 
oration of this event, as we propose, because of the 
tendency of the present age. It is crowded with 
great concerns, full of the rush and roar of business, 
of the turmoil and strife of politics, of the interest 
and enthusiasm naturally awakened by new and 
splendid discoveries aud inventions. We easily 



22 FIRST CEURCn, ORANGE. 

forget the past, with its lessons of wisdom, its noble 
deeds, its illustrious men and their worthy exam- 
ple, its great crises, its seed planting, germinating 
and growing of that which now has spread its pro- 
tecting branches over us, and rejoices us with its 
shade and fruit. Even in the kingdom of God 
there is this same danger existing. Events are here 
transpiring, which startle us because of their mag- 
nitude and significance in respect to the future. 
The world is all astir with excitement and activity 
in matters of religion. Responsibilities and duties 
press upon us, one after the other, in great num- 
bers and with a constantly accumulating force. 
We are likely to attempt their discharge at a great 
disadvantage, to say the least, because untaught by 
what has been concerning what shall be, and not im- 
bued with the spirit of the past, encouraged and 
cheered by its examples, and apprehending its 
necessary relations to the future. 

It is natural, as we gather to-night for the pur- 
pose of inaugurating the ceremonies of the present 
occasion, for the inquiry to arise, and we do well to 
put the question to each other, which was heard 



SER3I0K 23 

from tlie lips of the children at the feast of the 
Passover, " "What mean ye by this service ?" It is 
the part of true wisdom accurately to define for 
ourselves, as well as for others, what significance 
attaches to the commemorative service in which we 
are now about to engage. Just this I propose to 
do, esteeming it the most appropriate subject which 
can occupy our attention at this hour. 

I. We mean hy this service, first of all, gratefully to 
recall to our recollection the past history of this church, 
and fully to possess ourselves of it as our rightful inher- 
itance. 

There is always a great and growing importance, 
and value, in that which is by-gone and of other 
days, belonging to anything which is in itself of 
real worth, and is continuous and expansive in its 
life, growth, and power of influence through suc- 
cessive periods of time. The past in such a case 
becomes as a treasure house, built of costly and pre- 
cious materials, having an architecture, adornment 
and furnishing peculiarly its own, in which are 
already stored, and are ever accumulating, memen- 



24 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

toes ianumeral)lc, aud of every variety, of the 
goodness of God in His gracious interpositions, 
wise overruling of unpropitious circumstances and 
events, and loving dispensations of mercy and 
favor ; the choicest treasures of human experience, 
also, wrought out amid the changeful, ever-varying 
conditions of our existence upon earth ; the most 
valuable lessons of wisdom, too, from which to 
gain instruction, because the practical results of 
principles and rules of action already tested. 

How true this is in respect to the life of an indi- 
vidual, each one can discover for himself. Some- 
times, in our hasty judgment of the past, after re- 
view of what is wrong, imperfect, weak, reflecting 
little or no credit upon us, possibly covering us with 
shame, we turn from it in disgust, and wish most 
heartily that it could all be blotted out. But no 
man who rightly appreciates it will for a moment 
cherish such a wish. However strongly he may 
desire that much of his conduct had been different, 
and that his character, even, which therein finds its 
truthful record, had been just the opposite in its 
moral quality, yet taking it precisely as it is, all 



SEEMOK 25 

blotted and marred it may be with his own evil 
doing, it is full to overflowing of the peculiar and 
marvelous manifestations of the love of God, which 
are all his own possession ; crowded with various 
experiences, which if not pleasant to recall are yet 
vocal with needful instruction and solemn warning; 
and abounding on every hand with practical lessons 
of wisdom, to which it is well to take heed as to 
a light in a dark place. To the good man, however, 
whose life has been spent in the service of God and 
his fellow men, how much there is to cheer and 
bless in the recollection ; how fragrant the memo- 
ries of the loving kindnesses of a heavenly Father, 
with which life thus far, every day of it, has been 
crowned ; how inspiring to behold what the Divine 
Hand hath wrought through him as its willing 
instrument ; how valuable beyond comparison its 
teachings concerning the blessedness of those who 
hope in God, who trust in Him, and with all their 
powers of body, and mind, and heart, love and serve 
Him. 

The same may be said of family history. Of what 
worth it is to have an honored ancestry ; to be able 
to trace your descent through a long line of noble 
3 



26 FIRST CnUIiCn, ORANGE. 

men and women, who have left tlieir impress for 
good upon the age in which they have lived ; whose 
virtues have been transmitted as a goodly heritage, 
from parent to child, down through each successive 
generation ; and whose lives of purity and goodness 
are kept in living remembrance, and held up for 
imitation. Such a family history is like an old pic- 
ture gallery, quaint and rare in all its appointments ; 
hung with all the master-pieces of art, representing 
that which is beautiful with exquisite delicacy of 
touch and color ; bringing out with bolder, firmer 
stroke, that which is rugged and grand ; depicting 
also, with the same fidelity and skill, that which is 
heroic and sublime in human action, lofty in under- 
taking, and noble in achievement. You never 
weary of wandering through it, studying with 
unflagging interest what is there set forth, drink- 
ing in with ever increasing delight and higher 
appreciation its inspiring and ennobling influences. 
So it is with this gallery of family history, of which 
one who belongs to the favored circle which it in- 
cludes has the key, and can enter it when he will. 
There he finds exhibited all that is lovely and of 
good report in the characters and lives of those who 



8EBM0N. 27 

have graced and adorned the name they bear, by 
their virtues and excellencies ; and that which is 
full of ruggedness and strength, of real heroism and 
sublimity, where great and sore trials have been 
endured, dangers faced, difficulties encountered 
and overcome, temptations set at naught, and great 
achievements won. All this is of incalculable 
value to one whose privilege it is to inherit the 
treasures of such a family history, and live and act 
under their inspiration. 

It need not be added, that what is true in rela- 
tion to the past in the case of an individual, or of a 
family with its long line of honored ancestry, is 
equally so in regard to the history of a nation. 
You do not need to be told, that every nation upon 
the face of the earth takes peculiar pride in all the 
great events which have transpired since its founda- 
tion, and is careful to chronicle and preserve them; 
and how it feels itself richer in honorable records 
with every passing year ; how it treasures up the 
noble deeds of patriotism which any of its citizens 
have performed in its behalf, either in time of war 
or peace, and delights to honor their memory ; and 
how it glories more and more in all these things 



28 FIRST CmmCE, ORANGE. 

the older it grows, the more fully and firmly estab- 
lished it is, and the more powerful, widely ex- 
tended, and influential it becomes. How do we as 
a nation, though not yet a century old, pride our- 
selves upon our past history, and esteem it an ines- 
timable treasure to us already. 

But if, in all these instances which I have named, 
the past history is of so great value, of how much 
greater worth must it be in the case of the church 
at large, or even in the case of any single branch of 
it, like our own. It cannot be questioned that the 
church, inasmuch as it is the outward and visible 
representation of the kingdom of Christ upon earth 
— the kingdom of redemption — is vastly superior in 
rank and importance to these things which I have 
named. It is that to whose life, growth and pros- 
perity they are to contribute; that which holds in 
sacred trust the best interests of the individual, the 
family, and the nation, and is prepared to conserve, 
establish, and perpetuate all that is truly good in 
them. This venerable church, in its century and a 
half of existence, comprehends in some measure, 
and has woven in with itself, the history of every 
one who has lived within sound of its bell summon- 



8EBM0N. 29 

ing to Sabbath worship ; the history of every family 
group which, in its successive generations, has come 
upon the stage of action, and still has existence 
among us ; the history of the State, and even the 
nation. It had its beginning long before the throes 
began which gave birth to this Republic, and was 
witness of the many stirring scenes of the Revolu- 
tion, and an active participant by its membership 
in them, some of which occurred in its immediate 
vicinity, making the region round about it classic 
ground. 

Thanks to one of its honored pastors, the lamented 
HoYT, who is in spirit with us on this occasion, I 
doubt not, though gone to his rest, we have recorded 
with the utmost painstaking, and in a true his- 
toric spirit, all that could at so late a day be gleaned 
from the materials in existence, that was worthy to 
be preserved and transmitted to future generations. 
It is a record creditable alike to the head and the 
heart of its compiler, whose own life and work 
among us are held in fresh and loving remem- 
brance, and are now to become a part of the writ- 
ten history of the people for whose spiritual welfare 
he so faithfully labored. It is invaluable to us, 



30 FIRST CnURCE, ORANGE. 

inasmuch as it relates to the origin, life, and growth 
of a church which had committed to it, in the pro- 
vidence of God, a most important part to perform 
in building up the kingdom of Christ in this region, 
and has, as therein exhibited, nobly fulfilled its 
mission. There is something very precious and 
sacred about such a history. Therein is recited the 
many trials and difficulties through which the 
church has passed. It brings to view also the faith, 
the courage, and the prayerfulness which character- 
ized our forefathers in meeting and overcoming 
these. It portrays, likewise, with much of detail, 
the goodness of God as it has been displayed in 
behalf of His people, in the frequent and abundant 
outpourings of His Spirit ; in the prosperity with 
which He attended their labors of zeal and love; 
in the remarkable fruitfulness with which He has 
blessed the church, causing her to be the happy 
mother of so many worthy daughters, who to-day 
rise up to call her blessed, and have themselves 
some of them attained to the dignity and honor of 
maternity. 

It is both pleasing and profitable to trace, as 
therein set forth, the peculiar individuality of the 



SERMON. 31 

church ill its organic life aud growth. Possessing 
much in common with its sister churches, being one 
with them in Christ Jesus, one in doctrine and 
polity, one in its animating spirit and in its pur- 
pose, it has had characteristics peculiarly its own, 
distinguishing it from all others. There has always 
been a certain puritan simplicity about it, which is 
quite in keeping with the source whence it had its 
origin. And yet it has been thoroughly indigenous, 
which is easily to be traced to the material of which 
it has been hitherto composed — a solid, substantial 
yeomanry, breathing the pure air of this most salu- 
brious region, but still so near the great commer- 
cial centre of the continent as to feel the influence 
of its activity, and of its large and broad way of 
viewing all matters. It has been distinguished for 
its vital energy, which has rendered it strong in 
itself and independent of externals, and but little 
shaken apparently by the various trying experi- 
ences through which it has passed. This was due to 
a most marked and abiding sense of its dependence 
upon the great Head of the Church, which is the 
true secret of its strength and stability. It has been 
characterized by a remarkable purity and sound- 



32 FIRST CmmCE, ORANGE. 

ness of doctrinal belief in a practical and living 
form, so that it has not been " tossed to and fro, and 
carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the 
sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby 
they lie in wait to deceive," giving evidence, in 
this, of the fidelity with which a gifted and godly 
ministry have labored " in the word and doctrine," 
for its establishment and upholding. It has had a 
disposition to devise liberal things for the service of 
the Lord, as is clearly shown by this venerable 
structure, with it solid walls of hewn stone, so ex- 
cellent in its style and finish for the time when it 
was erected, so dignified, substantial and commo- 
dious, reflecting great credit upon those who were 
engaged in its construction, requiring, as it must 
have done, much of toil, self-denial and sacrifice at 
their hands, which is well worthy of imitation at 
the present day ; and also by a similar provision for 
the worship of God in the stone edifice which pre- 
ceded it ; and likewise by the generous support 
which has always been given to those who were 
placed over them in the Lord, in the ministerial 
office. 

But how much there is in the history of this our 



SERMON. 33 

venerable Zion, wliicli is unwritten and can never 
be spread out upon the printed page, or even find 
expression in human language, and yet is by far 
the larger, and the most precious part, of the legacy 
which the past brings down to us. That which is 
thus unrecorded has had by far the most to do in 
making the church what it is to-day. 

In this category must be reckoned the inner life 
and experiences of the saintly host who have be- 
longed to it through the century and a half of its 
existence. "What these have been no man knoweth, 
save the Son of Man, whom the beloved disciple in 
vision beheld, holding the seven stars in his right 
hand, and walking in the midst of the seven golden 
candlesticks. They are all recorded in His book of 
remembrance, and there stand as a part of the his- 
tory of this church, in connection with which they 
have transpired. To Him only is it known how 
their unconscious influence has gone forth, silently 
and unperceived, to mould and give character, and 
determine what the future of this spiritual temple 
of the Lord should be. It is manifest that these 
must have been, for the most part, of a high order 
as to piety, fervor and devotion. Otherwise it 



34 FIRST CEURCH, ORANGE. 

would not be the strong, compact, and firmly estab- 
lished spiritual building which it now is, nor have 
lingering yet in its sacred precincts the fragrance 
of their christian character, and the precious aroma 
of their love for the dear Lord, which led them 
freely to devote their best and costliest to His ser- 
vice. From these holy men and women who have 
here lived, labored, and fallen asleep at last in 
Jesus, there have gone forth such influences as will 
never fail of their effective operation in this church, 
so long as the world stands. The good man never 
ceases to exist on earth, though every trace of him 
may be gone from the sight and memory of men. 
He has become a spiritual force, which the Master 
will always continue to employ, until the top-most 
stone of His living temple upon earth is laid, amid 
the shoutings of the angels and the redeemed. 

Countless in number, and of every conceivable 
variety, are the fervent petitions which have gone 
up into the ear of the Most High, who heareth 
prayer, in broken utterance, with streaming eye and 
falling tear, from the hearts of God's people in all 
past time since this church began its existence. 
These have been offered, not for present blessings 



SERMOK 35 

alone, but for blessings in abundant measure to 
descend, in all future time, down even to the latest 
generation, upon this, the dearest object of their 
affection. From the secresy of the closet, where 
none but God could hear or see the praying saint 
on bended knee ; and from these fields, and wood- 
lands, and mountain slopes, and the streets even of 
this extended territory, which the parish has em- 
braced within its limits, there have been breathed 
supplications, which have been winged by strong 
faith, and have gone up on swift pinion to Heaven 
above. And all along through the rapid flight of 
years, these precious prayers have been receiving 
continual answer, from a covenant-keeping God. 
i^one can estimate what this church, for its quiet, 
its purity, its prosperity, its long continuance, its 
success, owes to these same prayers. But we all 
very well know that every blessing which it has 
enjoyed is due, in very large measure, to their won- 
derful efficacy. And they are yet laid up in store 
for us of the present generation, and for all who 
come ^fter us, full of efficacy in procuring blessing 
as the clouds of rain, and ready under the Divine 



36 FIRST CnUItCn, ORANGE. 

direction as they, to cause the grateful, fertilizing 
shower to fall upon us. In the hands of the four 
beasts, and of the four and twenty elders, whom 
the Apostle John beheld prostrating themselves 
before the Lamb, who was about to open the seven 
seals of the mystical book, there were golden vials 
full of odors, which are the prayers of the saints. 
Does not this signify that these prayers are a trea- 
sure laid up in Heaven to receive answer in abun- 
dant measure in all future time ? How does the 
past come down to us, then, laden with inexhaust- 
ible riches, in the fervent supplications of pious 
hearts, ofiercd up in behalf of this church so dear 
to them, all unnoted and unrecorded upon earth, 
but held in precious remembrance on high ! 

ISTor of less worth is another portion of our inher- 
itance in the past history of this church — the mani- 
fold and varied endeavors of the great company of 
Christ's servants who have occupied hitherto this 
vineyard of the Lord. With faith and prayer they 
have cultivated the soil, and sown the seed, which 
is yet to spring up and bear an abundant harvest, 
though something of the fruitage is already gath- 



SEEMOK 37 

ered into' the heavenly storehouses. The seed of 
the Word, which it is the christian's privilege to 
sow, is sometimes long in springing up. It lies 
dormant, awaiting God's time, as the seed of a 
former generation of forest trees lies in the rich 
loam until the right time for it to spring up shall 
come. And when it does shoot upward from out 
the soil in which it is planted, and reach its fruit- 
hearing, it is not of short life, but is like the tree 
" planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf also 
shall not wither." The abundant and faithful 
labors of Christ's ministers, who have here lived 
and died, think you that they have ceased to be 
fruitful of good to this church, sources of its vitality 
and power, hidden springs from which flow refresh- 
ing streams of holy influence ? By no means. ISTot 
while the world stands, shall this prove true. Nei- 
ther has God forgotten a single earnest endeavor 
for the upbuilding of this church, put forth in 
weakness by the feeblest member of the flock. 
Nor will He fail to render it also fruitful of blessing 
thereto, until the end of time. " He that goeth forth 
and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubt- 



38 FIRST cmmcn, orange. 

less come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves 
with him," when the long working day of the 
world's redemption is ended. The sowing is man's 
work. But the growing, and fruit-bearing, and 
harvesting, are God's care. And these latter pro- 
cesses will continue until the song of the angels, 
shouting harvest home, is heard resounding through 
the skies. 

How very precious, then, is the past, by reason 
of these toilsome and tearful, yet trustful and loving 
labors of our forefathers for the salvation of souls, 
for the establishment and upbuilding of this church, 
for the honor of Christ and the glory of God. 
They each, under the Divine superintendence, are 
noiselessly working among the life forces of this 
spiritual building, which is slowly growing up " to 
an holy temple in the Lord, in whom we also are 
builded together, for an habitation of God through 
the Spirit." 

Ye see then your inheritance, brethren, which the 
past history of this venerable church yields into 
your hands, as yours, and bids you take up, and 
employ, and transmit to future generations. We 



SERMON. 39 

are now engaging in a service, one purpose of which 
is the review of our priceless inheritance, which 
has come down to us from our godly ancestry, who 
were fellow members with us of this household of 
faith. We are bidden to look upon it, that we may 
see how it is enriched with their prayers and tears, 
and adorned by their holy walk and conversation^ 
and fragrant with their benedictions, which they 
left behind them upon all who should come after, 
as they passed from earth to Heaven. We are sum- 
moned thus to behold it, that we may understand 
its real worth, its manifold resources, the many 
advantages which it affords, and the numerous bless- 
ings it confers. We are thus to contemplate it that 
we may fully possess ourselves of it, and make it 
all our own as our rightful inheritance. This is in 
part our answer to the inquiry which so naturally 
arises, " What mean ye by this service ?" 

II. But this is not all. We would also cast our 
eyes forward into the yet unrevealed future, to dis- 
cover, if we may, what the possibilities are in reference 
to the future history of this church, what mission it yet 



40 FIRST CHURCn, ORANGE. 

has to jperform, ivhai place to Jill, and what results to 
achieve. We must not sit down to content ourselves 
with ivhai has been already- but exjjlore what is 
before us, to see ichat may yet be in time to come, 
whereby the inheritance we have received may be 
enlarged, beautified, and enriched. To do other- 
wise is a most fatal error. " Precious indeed," says 
Liddon, in his Bampton Lectures, " precious indeed 
to every wise man, to every association of true- 
hearted and generous men, must ever be the inher- 
itance of the past. Yet what is the past without 
the future 'i What is memory when unaccompanied 
by hope ? Look at the case of the single soul. Is 
it not certain that a life of high, earnest purpose, 
will die outright if it is permitted to sink into the 
placid reverie of perpetual retrospect ; if the man 
of action becomes the mere " laudator temporis 
acti ?" How is the force of moral life developed 
and strengthened ? Is it not by successive, con- 
scious efibrts to act and to suffer at the call of duty? 
Must not every moral life dwindle and fade away, 
if it be not reaching forward to a standard higher, 
truer, purer, stronger, than its own ? Will not the 



SERMON. 41 

struggles, the sacrifices, tlie self-conquests even of 
a great character, in by-gone years, if they now oc- 
cupy its whole field of vision, only serve to consum- 
mate its ruin ? As it doatingly fondles them in 
memory, will it not be stiffened by conceit into a 
moral petrifaction, or consigned by sloth to the 
successive processes of moral decomposition ? Has 
not the author of our life so bound up its deepest 
instincts and yearnings with His own eternity, that 
no blessings in the past would be blessings, if they 
were utterly unconnected with the future ? * * * 
A natioii must have a future before it, a future 
which can rebuke its despondency, and can direct 
its enthusiasm ; a future for which it will prepare 
itself ; a future which it will aspire to create, and 
control. Unless it would barter away the vigorous 
nerve of true patriotism, for the feeble pedantry of 
a soulless archaeology, a nation cannot fall back 
altogether upon the centuries which have flattered 
its ambition, or which have developed its material 
well-beiug. Something it must propose to itself as 
an object to be compassed in coming time, some- 
thing which is as yet beyond it. * * * So it is 

also in the case of society. The greatest of all 
3 



42 FIRST CnURCn, ORANOE. 

societies among men at tliis moment is the church 
of Jesus Christ. Is she sustained only by the deeds 
and writings of her saints, and martyrs in a distant 
past, or only by her reverent, trustful sense of the 
Divine Presence which blesses her in the actual 
present ? Does she not resolutely pierce the gloom 
of the future, and confidently reckon upon new 
struggles and triumphs on earth, and beyond these 
upon a home in heaven, wherein she will enjoy rest 
and victory ; a rest that no trouble can disturb — a 
victory that no reverse can forfeit ?" 

Assuredly we must give full and hearty assent to 
these sentiments, so eloquently expressed and en- 
forced, and feel that they have direct and most per- 
tinent application to us at the present time. It is 
our solemn duty to consider well the future, and 
ponder deeply what it has in store for the church 
with which we stand connected, if we and those 
who come after us do not fail of our duty and privi- 
lege in this matter. 

It requires but the • most cursory glance into 
the near future, to discover that we are upon the 
verge of something grander and nobler in concep- 
tion and execution than ever yet has been realized. 



SERMON. 43 

in every department of liuman activity. Though 
there may not be so much accomplished, perhaps, 
in the way of new discoveries, yet in the appli- 
cation of those which have been already made, to 
meet the necessities of men, an era of prodigious 
undertakings is dawning upon us. Nor are these 
such as cannot be carried through to completion, 
or when consummated, likely to prove of little 
value. Enough has already been achieved to show 
that the energy of will which is brought into use, 
will be quite equal to the mighty strain put upon 
it ; and also that the judgment exercised will not 
be at fault in giving right direction to whatever is 
undertaken. The girdling of continents with iron 
roadways; the traversing of oceans which wash 
shores widely distant from each other with swift 
steamships ; the tying together of great countries 
by a wire thread stretched along the bottom of the 
wide sea, or in the thin atmosphere above the earth, 
through which intelligence can. be flashed in the 
twinkling of an eye, we must regard as only the 
first instalments of what is yet to transpire, by 
which all the inhabitants of the world shall be 
made akin, and their material interests be greatly 



44 FIRST CEURCn, ORANOE. 

promoted. There are already half-defined prophe- 
cies of something greater shortly to follow ; — 
possibilities yet slumbering, waiting the touch of a 
master hand to evolve them into realities. 

The age just at hand is to be one of the most 
radical changes in the condition of society, and of 
state. Even now there are beginnings of revolu- 
tions, for the most part peaceful, which foreshadow 
great overturnings, readjustments, and reforms ; 
the overthrow of erroneous and effete systems of 
legislation and government; and the removal of 
the great obstacles to human progress, which have 
hitherto stood in the way, like insurmountable bar- 
riers. iSTo Ecumenical Council can avail to keep 
back the on-rushing tide of popular sentiment 
which is setting in the direction of freedom of 
thought and action. The Pope and his Cardinals 
and Bishops might as well take their stand at low 
water upon tlie sandy beach, and endeavor to force 
back the sea as it rises higher and higher, and rolls 
in farther and farther with every succeeding wave 
upon the main-land. N'o barricading of the streets 
of the French capital, so as to quell an uprising, 
will long preserve the sceptre and throne of the 



SERMON. 45 

Emperor ISTapoleou, unless he gracefully yields, to 
the steru demand of the people, the rights of which 
they have been so long defrauded. The questions 
of the separation of church and state ; of the right 
to popular education ; of participation in the affairs 
of government in some form or other by the 
people, are already virtually decided. Feudalism, 
caste, tyranny and despotism, are soon to become 
traditions of the past, rather than present realities. 
Labor and capital are seeking a new and more 
equitable adjustment of their relations to each 
other. The basis of standing in society, and of 
reputation among men, is gradually shifting from 
that of birth, or wealth, or any of the merely acci- 
dental and false grounds of social distinction, to 
that of real worth of character and life, such as has 
been displayed in one of our own countrymen, 
who has so recently departed this life. Of humble 
origin, and wholly destitute of any adventitious 
circumstances wherewith to win favor and distinc- 
tion, he has risen to the highest position of esteem 
and admiration among men, by the sheer force of 
simple, unpretending goodness in character, and of 
the most bountiful and loving liberality to the 



46 FIRST CETJBCn, ORANGE. 

poor, the ignorant, the suffering, and the down- 
trodden. What a contrast to his life, and to the 
esteem in which he is held, and what an evidence 
also that the mere possession of money cannot buy 
the esteem of men, is exhibited in one of his com- 
peers in wealth who has recently had the doubtful 
compliment paid him of the erection of a magnifi- 
cent bronze statue in his honor, the unveiling of 
which was made the subject of such burlesque and 
ridicule the other day, among those who know him 
best, and where he had gained his fortune in large 
measure. 

iN'or less significant are present indications as to 
what the future is to be in its religious aspect. It 
always betokens a great advance in the kingdom of 
grace, when you find Satan setting up his throne of 
power, and actively engaged in rallying liis forces 
to fresh onset, and to redoubled exertions for the 
overthrow of righteousness. When the Son of God 
came to earth, the evil one at once set on foot a 
project for his destruction ; and so it was at the 
time when he entered upon his public ministry, and 
thereafter. Satan was ever on the alert and most 
determined in his efforts of opposition to Him, and 



SERMON. 47 

to His work of grace. When the early church 
began to spread itself in every direction, what 
fierce persecutions he incited and set in motion, in 
order to forestall, and put down, and crush it out 
if possible. So has it ever been from that time to 
this. He scents danger to his rule among men 
from afar, and is quick to ward it ofi" if possible. 
What we behold, then, of desperate assault upon 
the person and work of our divine Lord, and upon 
the written word of Revelation, and upon the 
church, by those in league with Satan, and obe- 
dient to his dictation, only betokens a movement 
already in progress which is destined to result in 
highly exalting Him in the esteem of men, and 
leading them to enthrone Him in their hearts as 
well as over their lives, the Lord of all, as never 
before. Even this great assemblage now conven- 
ing on the banks of the Tiber for the purpose of 
tightening the chains of spiritual bondage, in 
which Satan has so long held millions enslaved, 
through the instrumentality of a corrupt church, 
is most conclusive evidence that these slaves are 
threatening to break loose therefrom entirely, and 
foreshadows their emancipation as near at hand. 



48 FTBST Cmmcn, ORANGE. 

What magnificent opportunities, also, are offer- 
ing for the spread of the kingdom of Christ, and 
for the wide diffusion of His gospel. What facili- 
ties also are afforded wherewith to accomplish what 
remains to be done to possess the world for Jesus, 
by reason of the proximity into which the most 
distant nations are brought in relation to each 
other, and the action and reaction which they are 
having upon one another in every possible way. 
The church, too, in its every separate branch, and 
throughout its entire membership, is beginning to 
awake, to put on its strength, and to gird itself for 
the great spiritual warfare which is before it. It is 
uniting its scattered and hitherto conflicting bands 
around their common standard, the Cross. It is 
inspiring itself with new zeal, and faith, and love, 
and is proposing to itself magnificent enterprises in 
the building up of the Redeemer's kingdom, such 
as the men of this world fearlessly undertake for 
the advancement of their material interests. It 
seems to be unwilling any longer that it should be 
said of itself, " the children of this world are wiser 
in their generation than the children of light." 
It is upon such a future in the world at large, 



SERMON. 49 

which I have attempted to portray, but which no 
words of mine can adequately set forth, that this 
church is to enter. And it is a future wherein it 
may perform a most important part, and achieve 
results which it is given to few to attain. For if 
you will now turn your eyes from this broad out- 
look upon what is before us, to that which is 
nearer at hand and more immediately concerns 
this church in time to come, you cannot fail to see 
that its opportunities and facilities for service in 
Christ's name are, in common with those of its 
sister churches in this region, almost unparalleled. 
If the great metropolis of which we are in reality, 
though not in name, already a part, should con- 
tinue to be the grand commercial emporium that 
it now is — and nobody dreams of the contrary — 
increasing and overflowing from year to year, in 
the future as it has done in the past, then we are to 
be located in the midst of a dense population, for 
the most part intelligent, cultivated, full of busi- 
ness energy and skill. It bids fair to be a popula- 
tion second to none in the land, for the qualities of 
character and action which are needful in the ser- 
vice of Christ ; one neither puffed up with pride 



50 FIRST CEURCE, ORANGE. 

by reason of great wealth, nor swallowed up by the 
eddying currents of the whirlpool of fashion, nor 
80 extremely select and super-refined in their aris- 
tocratic notions that the lowly and humble work to 
which the despised Nazarene calls His disciples will 
be altogether too much beneath them. There is 
no grander field for christian activity than is thus 
opening more and more on every hand, right about 
us. 

Then, too, we are placed near the heart, and not 
at the extremities, by our proximity to the chief 
city in importance of the western continent. It is 
one of the world's great marts for traffic and com- 
merce, and the center-point whither men congre- 
gate from every land and nationality under the 
heavens. Christians here, in their daily contact 
with these men, may make their own individual 
influence world-wide. A church situated as this 
is, and composed of those who, like the early 
christians, preach the Word wherever they go, by 
pure lives, by loving words of warning and en- 
treaty, and by good deeds of mercy and charity, 
may make itself felt with mighty power through- 
out the length and breadth of the earth. Truly 



SERMOK 51 

it is — to use the Saviour's own comparison — " a 
city that is set on a hill, that cannot be hid." 

What ought not a church to be, and to do, which 
is thus favorably situated, and has such advantages 
and opportunities afforded it for making its power 
felt, both here and everywhere throughout the 
wide world ? How peremptorily is it called upon 
to summon its energies to accomplish its utmost, as 
it enters upon another half century of its existence, 
at a time like this ! How ought it to be stimulated 
to activity when such a glorious era is dawning 
upon the world, so full of inspiration to high and 
holy endeavor, and lofty and sublime undertaking; 
when everything is conspiring to render what the 
people of God may do for the upbuilding of the 
Redeemer's Kingdom eminently successful ! Espe- 
cially, what is there that ought to belong to any 
church, that should not characterize our own, in 
the future which lies before us ? "What a past 
history it has ! What precious legacies of holy 
example, triumphant faith, fervent prayer, and 
noble achievement! How it has, by these many 
years of experience and discipline, become estab- 
lished and settled, grown strong and stable, and 



52 FIliST CEUBCff, ORANGE. 

become toughened in its every fibre, and inured 
to endurance, and schooled to patient continu- 
ance in well-doing ! Surely none should be suf- 
fered to surpass it in the piety of its membership, 
their purity of life, their holy zeal, their ardent 
devotion, their indomitable energy, their unwa- 
vering faith, their willingness to spend and be 
spent for Christ, their boldness of undertaking, 
their exalted conceptions of what is their high 
privilege, their joy and gladness in labor, toil and 
self-sacrifice for their Divine Master, in imitation 
of His example. ^lay God grant that such a 
practical appreciation of the future which is before 
this church, and of its great privilege and respon- 
sibility in view thereof, as I have set it forth, shall 
be another answer which we shall give to the ques- 
tion, "What mean ye by this service ?" 

III. But we may not stop here. Still further 
answer must we give to this query which we have 
put to one another. And it relates to the present. 
"We are to respond as members of this church in 
regard to what we will do, in view of the position 
which we now occupy — a position midway be- 



SERMON. 53 

tween its past and its future. It is no light tiling 
to stand where we do to-day. It involves no ordi- 
nary responsibility. Not only do we hold in our 
hands, and subject to our disposal, what has already 
transpired in the history of this church, which is 
iitted to be of future service, but we are to deter- 
mine what shall transpire in time to come in large 
measure. Its ongoing is to be through us who 
are now upon the stage of action. "We must do 
much, whatever our course of conduct in this 
matter may be, to give it shape and direction, 
"We have to do with the prayers and labors, the 
seed sowing, and the tearful, but patient and hope- 
ful watering of the same on the part of God's ser- 
vants for a century and a half. It rests with us 
whether what has already borne much fruit, but is 
capable of bringing forth in years to come mani- 
fold more than in those gone by, shall yield yet 
more glorious harvests, for the ingathering of the 
angel reapers. How sacred the trust committed 
tons! How solemn the duty in view thereof ! 

Especially is this the case, when it seems as if 
the very midsummer of the church's history is fast 



54 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

approachiug, and eveu now is close at hand. For 
no one can for a moment doubt that tlie next half 
century of its existence, under the circumstances 
which are certain to surround it, may be far richer 
in results than any similar period in the past. It 
would seem as if this churcli were now about to 
enter upon the golden age in its history. And 
who of us shall dare to be in the way of the reali- 
zation of all that may be reasonably anticipated for 
it ? AYho does not see that to be recreant to duty 
at such a time as this, is to trifle with the most 
sacred of trusts, and with the most inviting and 
promising opportunities for the fulfi.lment of what 
is reposed in us ? "We cannot be unmindful of 
what belongs to us, in view of the position which 
we occupy, and neglectful of the duty growing out 
of the same, without inflicting a great wrong, both 
upon those who have preceded us, into the fruit of 
whose labors we enter, and upon those who are to 
come after us, over whose interests we at present 
have control. It is with us as when an army, con- 
tending long and bravely against a powerful and 
determined foe, gains substantial advantages, and 



SERMON. 55 

puts itself in position at last to push the enemy to 
the wall, and achieve glorious results ; but finds 
that through exhaustion and the decimation of 
its ranks by death, it can go no further. Fresh 
troops come upon the field, to whom the privilege 
is given of taking up what has already been 
accomplished by it, and all the advantages which 
now lie before it, and make them successful be- 
yond what has ever been dreamed of by those who 
have hitherto borne the brunt of the conflict. 
How momentous the position in which such a 
body of soldiers is placed! How important that 
they at once, and with their whole energy, spring 
to their task, and carry all before them, until vic- 
tory be complete, and all its fruits be secured. 

But suppose that they do not, and are unmindful 
of their position, and of the critical juncture which 
they are called to meet. What disgrace, what 
burning shame would cover them ! How would 
they deserve to have the arms of their own com- 
rades who have fought so bravely, turned against 
them, and they be driven from the field, where 
they have brought such dishonor upon not them- 



56 FIRST CnURCH, ORANGE. 

selves alone, but upon those whom they should 
have covered with glory by causing their efibrts to 
be successful, in the attainment of their object. 

This church is such an army, and is engaged in 
the great warfare with the powers of darkness. 
Steadily and persistently, through many years of 
conflict, has it waged successful warfare, never 
trailing its standard in the dust, never giving way 
before the enemy, though ofttimes he has come in 
like a flood, until now a point is reached where the 
future is bright with promise of the most signal 
and sublime results, and the advantages already 
obtained are of such a character as to warrant the 
expectation that these results may be realized. 
But they who have thus manfully struggled, bear- 
ing the heat and burden of the day, where are 
they ? They have one by one fallen out of their 
places, even while fightiug, and with their armor 
on, and they sleep in the city of the dead, and their 
Bouls have gone to their rest and reward. We 
have come forward to take their places. And 
shall we fail to meet the present momentous crisis? 
Shall we be recreant to duty, when so much is 



SERMON. 57 

within easy grasp, and everything conspires to 
incite endeavor, nerve ns with courage, and fill us 
with hope, nay with the most confident expecta- 
tion ? Heaven forbid ! "We will not act thus 
basely. We will not bring this deepest disgrace 
upon ourselves, and upon those into whose labors 
we enter, that we may reap the fruits thereof. Be 
it rather our determined resolve to accept the trust 
which they of the past have given into our hands, 
together with all that it brings in the way of 
advantage, and in the form of responsibility. Be 
it ours to comprehend and deeply appreciate the 
significance of the times in which we live, and the 
promise of the future just before us. And in view 
of both, here and now let us solemnly dedicate 
ourselves to Christ, and to the work of promoting 
and building up this church, in a manner commen- 
surate with our privilege and opportunity. Let us 
do this with a fijsedness of purpose that knows no 
wavering, and with a loftiness of aim which shall 
in no way fall below what the future seems to give 
the certainty of attaining. How are we con- 
strained to do this, as to-day we stand in the 
4 



58 FIRST CEURCH, ORANGE. 

presence of those who have gone before us in 
occupying the places which we now fill ! Though 
they have been numbered, some of them long, 
with the general assembly of the church of the 
First Born on high, yet think you that they are 
indifierent spectators from yonder heavenly heights 
of what is transpiring here at this very hour ? Are 
those who have stood in this pulpit as the messen- 
gers of God to dying men, and gone among these 
homes caring for the flock of God, as faithful 
shepherds, through whose labors in word and doc- 
trine this church has been established and made to 
flourish; those who have died at their post with 
their harness on, and whose memories have been 
honored by these monumental inscriptions sacred 
thereto ; are they unmindful of what we are now 
doing, and of what we here engage that we will 
undertake, in view of what lies before us ? I tell 
you, nay. These all are as a great cloud of wit- 
nesses by which we are compassed about, and they 
hold us in full survey. I seem to hear them from 
the heavenly heights saying to us, " It was ours to 
sow. It is yours to reap. Fail not to do your 



SEEMON. 59 

appointed work, that both ' he that soweth and he 
that reapeth may rejoice together/ in the day of 
final ingathering." 

The great E'apoleon once sought to in8X3ire his 
army with enthusiasm for the task before them, 
and nerve them to the highest endeavor, while 
fighting in Egypt, within sight of its pyramids, by 
shouting to them as they were about to go into 
battle, " Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon 
you." So may it be said to you, but with greater 
significance and more solemn emphasis, and with 
far more to inspire and kindle your hearts with 
enthusiasm. Men and women of this church, full 
five generations look down upon you — not in the 
form of speechless monuments of human achieve- 
ment, but in the persons of your brethren in 
Christ. They are a part of this branch of the 
great family of the redeemed, who have crossed 
the flood, where they watch with intense interest 
the ongoing of what is so dear to them in remem- 
brance, and is so closely associated with their own 
past history. 

How do they of the generations yet to come also 



60 FIRST CnURCn, ORANGE. 

rise up, and beckon to us with uplifted finger. 
They bid us note well the significance of all the 
great movements which are transpiring in the 
earth, and mark with care what the indications 
are respecting the prosperity of our beloved Zion. 
They call upon us to see what achievements may 
yet be granted through its instrumentality for the 
honor of our dear Lord, far surpassing and eclips- 
ing all that has ever yet been attained — all of 
which may be transmitted to them as their inher- 
itance. 

"When asked, then, " "What mean ye by this ser- 
vice ?" let us, in addition to the answers already 
given, with firm resolve and humble dependence 
upon Almighty God, and in clear ringing tones, 
unitedly reply, we mean the voluntary and abso- 
lute consecration of ourselves to the Lord Jesus in 
the accomplishment of the great work which He 
has given us to perform, as members of this His 
church. "VVe here give ourselves, afresh, and with- 
out reserve, to be employed in promoting its 
advancement, and the honor of our common Lord, 
through its instrumentality ; saying to ourselves, 



SERMOK 



61 



as did the Hebrews of old by the rivers of Babylon, 
concerning Jerusalem, " If I forget thee, let my 
right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remem- 
ber thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
mouth ; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief 

joy." 




III. 

INAUGURATION OF 

POKAL TABLET 

TO THE 

First two Ministers of the Church, 

BY 

REV. W. HENRY GREEN, D. D. 







"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," 

" For since by man came death, by man came also 

the resurrection of the dead." 

II Cor. XV. 





ADDRESS 



HE word of God declares that the right- 
eous shall he in everlasting remem- 
^fes™^ . hrance, (Psalm cxii: 6,) and the memory 
of the just is hlessed, [Prov. x : 7.) Of this we 
have an illustration in this large and spontaneous 
gathering to commemorate the founding of this 
church. A century and more since they have 
entered into, their rest and their reward, this whole 
community rejoices to do honor to that pious hand 
of Christian men and women, to those self-denying 
and devoted ministers of Christ, who planted this 
church in what was then a wilderness. It is now 
in the heart of a populous and thriving commu- 
nity — the ahode of civilization and wealth and 
refinement — it has grown to fair proportions — it 
has sent out its branches on every side — this whole 
region is dotted with flourishing churches, the 
oifspring of this parent stock. It has a goodly 



66 FIRST CETmCE, ORANGE. 

history of a ceuturv and a half to look back upon 
— a record of the ordinances of religion sustained 
and perpetuated in their piirit}- and power through 
all that period — a record of a constantly increasing 
number of faithful worshippers to honor the name 
of Jesus, to exemplify and adorn His gospel, and 
to advance His cause and kingdom, — a record of 
souls hopefully converted to God, generation after 
generation, who have gone successively to swell 
the company of the Redeemed above, and who are 
now rejoicing in the presence of God and of the 
Lamb, — and an ever-widening circle of influence, 
which has leavened this whole region, set its stamp 
upon its population, given its direction to the cur- 
rent of public sentiment, and largely contributed 
to make Orange and the country around it what it 
is this day. All this we gratefully refer to the 
self-denying labors and privations of that godly 
people and their faithful pastors, who laid the 
foundation of this church of !N"ewark Mountain. 
They who painfully watched and nurtured the 
feeble germ just sprouting from the earth, might 
find it difficult to recognize the giant trunk be- 
neath whose spreading branches we are gathered 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 67 

now, with its noble proportions, its pleasing ver- 
dure and its refreshing shade. 

The good men whose names you have engraved 
upon the walls of this church, with a view to their 
perpetual remembrance, could they be recalled 
from their blissful seats, would not recognize the 
work of their own hands. The successive build- 
ings which they erected, and in which they wor- 
shipped, have long since disappeared ; the voices 
which there proclaimed the word of life, and the 
voices which were there joined in songs of praise, 
have long since been hushed ; the ministers and 
their auditors have long been numbered with the 
dead ; only scanty notices of them remain, which 
antiquarian research has succeeded in gathering 
up ; but the results which have flowed from the 
beginnings which they here made, are their im- 
perishable monument, and this whole generation, 
sensible of their indebtedness, rises up and calls 
them blessed. 

It is very difficult for us to transport ourselves 
back to the times in which our fathers lived — 
almost as impossible as it would have been for them 
to have imaged in advance the condition of things 



68 FIRST CmmCH, ORAFGE. 

iu which we now are. We must recall the period 
when this new continent was as yet unexplored ; 
when the primeval forests covered not only regions 
more remote, but this very territory all about us 
here, except as the few sparse settlers had effected 
their partial clearings, and the axe of the wood- 
man, and " Harrison's saw-mill," made their in- 
roads upon it ; when this was frontier ground ; 
when bounties were still offered for the destruction 
of wolves, and panthers, and foxes ; when the sav- 
age aborigines still held their title to the soil, and 
the French and the Indians were forever inspiring 
the colonists with fresh terrors of torture or of mas- 
sacre ; when, instead of the great empire now built 

up on this broad continent, under whose protection 
we rejoice and which takes rank with the most 
powerful nations of the earth, there were only a 
few scattered and feeble settlements ; when New 
York was a town of perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 inhab- 
itants ; in the very year in which the first Presby- 
tevian church was founded in that metropolis of 
churches ; six years before the first newspaper was 
printed there ; a dozen years before the first stage 
line was established between New York and Bos- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 69 

ton, running once in a month, and occupying four- 
teen days in the journey; wlien Kew Jersey was 
still under the Proprietary government, and the 
grasping demands of these claimants of the soil led 
to frequent disturbances on the part of the hardy 
settlers ; when the seas were infested by pirates, 
and the notorious Capt. Kidd had but recently 
been arrested in his murderous career ; when the 
entire Presbyterian body in this whole country 
could muster but twenty-three ordained ministers, 
and three probationers ; — such was the state of 
things when the foundation of this church was 
laid. How can we return to the present from such 
glimpses of the past, without thanking God, and 
taking courage ! 

Several years ago I remember to have looked 
through a package of the correspondence of Rev. 
Caleb Smith, preserved in the family, but of which 
I have now only a very imperfect recollection. I 
have, however, in my library, a copy of Poole's 
Commentary on the Scriptures, which I frequently 
consult, and greatly value for its intrinsic excel- 
lence, but which I hold in especial esteem on ac- 
count of its history. It is in 2 vols., folio. The title 



70 FIRST CmiRCH, ORANGE. 

page of each volume, with a few pages at the begin- 
ning and the end, have been torn or worn away, 
though the volumes are otherwise in perfect pre- 
servation. I cannot, therefore, determine the year 
of their publication ; but it contains a family record 
of three successive generations. The second family 
whose history is here traced, is that of Rev. Caleb 
Smith, the second pastor of this church. The date 
of his own birth, that of his marriage, and the 
births of his several children, are therein clearly 
and legibly noted by his own hand. I may men- 
tion that these dates, which are unquestionably 
authentic, while corroborating in the main the 
figures given by your late pastor, the Rev. Mr. 
Hoyt, in his very full and accurate history of this 
church, suggest a slight amendment in one par- 
ticular. Rev. Mr. Smith was married one year 
earlier than is stated by Mr. Hoyt — September 7, 
1748, O. S. ; (and not September, 1749.) So slight 
a correction would scarcely be worth referring to, 
except as it destroys some of the romance which in 
the admirable history of this church before men- 
tioned, is gathered about the young minister then 
recently settled in this parish, and his frequent 



mATIGUBAL ADDRESS. 71 

visits upon a tender errand to Elizabethtown — the 
home of Miss Martha Dickinson — while the par- 
sonage was in the course of construction by the 
considerate people of his charge. I am sorry to 
mar this pleasing picture, hut historic truth obliges 
me to say that Mr. Smith was already married at 
the time of his settlement, and the special occasion 
for visits of the kind referred to was therefore 
past. 

Another consideration which obliges me to 
insist upon the correction of this error, trifling as 
it seems, is that Mr. Smith's eldest daughter Anna, 
from whom I claim the honor of being descended, 
if she was ever born at all, was born before Sep- 
tember, 1749. So that this unfortunate mistake 
would have the efiect of rendering her existence 
purely mythical, if not of entirely annihilating the 
entire body of her descendants ; a misfortune to 
which we cannot be expected tamely to' submit. 

This venerable Commentary of which I have 
spoken, no doubt had its place in the pastor's 
study, in the new parsonage, and contributed its 
share to his instructions and his expositions of 
Scripture, during his entire pastorate. 



72 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

Before they came into the possession of Rev. 
Mr. Smith, these volumes had been owned by his 
father-in-hiw, Rev. Mr, Dickinson, of Elizabeth- 
town. Mr. Smith, soon after his graduation at 
Yale College, came, at Mr. Dickinson's invitation, 
to assist him iu teaching his classical school, the 
germ of the College of New Jersey. "W^hile there 
he studied theology, and was licensed by the 
Presbytery of New York. His acceptability as 
a preacher is shown by the fact of his receiving 
calls from a number of difierent churches, among 
which he concluded to accept that which was ten- 
dered to him from this church. lie was accord- 
ingly settled here, in November, 1748, bringing 
with him, as his wife, Mr. Dickinson's youngest 
daughter, to whom he had been married two 
months before, and who is represented to have 
been a lady of rare excellence. 

According to the family record to which I have 
already several times referred, Mr. Dickinson had 
eight children. The seventh, his daughter Mary, 
was born in October, 1722, and baptised by Mr. 
"Webb. The readers of Mr. Hoyt's history will 
recognize this as the name of the minister, whom 



INAUGUBAL ADDRESS. 73 

an incorrect tradition makes to have been the pre- 
decessor of Rev. Mr. Taylor as the pastor of this 
church, but who was really settled over the church 
in IlTewark, though he may have occasionally sup- 
plied this church before they obtained the services 
of a regular pastor; and who was subsequently 
drowned, together with his son, while crossing the 
Connecticut river at Saybrook. 

Mr. Dickinson's youngest daughter, Martha, the 
future Mrs. Smith, was born in May, 1726, and 
baptised the same day, by Mr. Jedediah Andrews, 
the first Presbyterian minister ever settled in Phil- 
adelphia, 

Of Rev. Daniel Taylor, the first pastor of this 
church, I know nothing beyond what is stated 
in Mr. Hoyt's history, with which you are all 
familiar. His ministry carries us back to the 
formative period of this congregation, when its 
ecclesiastical organization even had not been deter- 
mined. It seems to have been first congregational. 
When, or under what influences, it became finally 
Presbyterian, is not certainly known. It might 
help to clear up some doubtful or disputed points 

5 



74 FIRST CEURCE, OEANGE. 

ill the ecclesiastical history of this region, if this 
could be satisfactorily ascertained. But there are 
no contemporaneous records to lend us a clue in 
this matter, and it must remain enveloped in ob- 
scurity. 

"We know, at all events, that Rev. Caleb Smith 
was a Presbyterian ; that he was installed here by 
the Presbytery of New York ; and that from that 
time forth, if never before, this church was em- 
braced in the Presbyterian connection. 

The schism in the Presbyterian church, which 
led to the formation of the Synod of New York by 
ministers who withdrew from the Synod of Phila- 
delphia, had taken place but three years before the 
settlement of Rev. Mr. Smith in this place. At 
the very next meeting of the Synod of New York, 
in May, 1749, a motion was offered, and prevailed, 
to make proposals of union to the Synod of Phila- 
delphia, and to appoint delegates to wait upon the 
Synod of Philadelphia with these proposals. Ne- 
gotiations were carried on between the two Synods 
for several years. At length, in the autumn of 
1756, the Synod of New York appointed a com- 



INAUGUBAL ADDRESS. 75 

mittee, of which Rev. Caleb Smith was one, to 
meet with a similar committee from the Synod of 
Philadelphia, to fix upon a proper plan of union, 
to be laid before each Synod at their next meeting. 
This plan was drawn up, submitted to the two 
Synods, accepted by them, and the United Synod 
of New York and Philadelphia met in the city of 
Philadelphia, in May, 1758. It is a pleasing omen 
in connection with your anniversary celebration, 
that a like union, only on a far larger scale, has 
just been effected between the two great Presbyte- 
rian bodies in this land ; and that next May will 
witness the assembling, in the city of Brotherly 
Love, not of a united Synod of six or seven Pres- 
byteries, and sixty or seventy ministers, but a 
united General Assembly of more than two hun- 
dred and fifty Presbyteries, and four thousand 
ministers. 

I find the name of Mr. Smith upon several im- 
portant committees, appointed at difl[erent times 
by the Synod; e.g., to prepare a plan respecting 
a fund for the support of ministers' widows and 
orphans ; to examine needy candidates for the min- 



76 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

istry ; to prepare an address to the commander-in- 
chief of all his majesty's forces. Once it is as the 
Commission of the Synod of New York, empow- 
ered to sit in the intervals of the regular session, to 
transact Synodical business ; and once as the Com- 
mission of the Synod of New York and Philadel- 
phia. And all his pacific qualities, for which he 
was distinguished, were brought into requisition 
by his being placed on a committee to appease the 
strife which had broken out in the refractory 
church in New York city, with its discordant 
elements, and which gave the Synod a world of 
trouble, coming up by complaint on reference year 
after year. One grievance related to Psalmody ; 
part of the congregation being wedded to Rouse, 
and another part preferring Watts, the first edi- 
tion of whose Psalms, I may remark, was pub- 
lished in London one hundred and fifty years ago, 
the very year that this church was founded. Ano- 
ther related to the singing of anthems in church, 
which greatly offended the consciences of some 
good people. Another cause of complaint was, 
that their minister offered prayer at funerals, when 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 77 

solicited by the relatives of the deceased to do so, 
and this they thought smacked of popery. Ano- 
ther was, that some of them thought it unpresby- 
terian that the property of the church should be 
held by trustees, instead of being committed to the 
deacons. All which goes to show that there were 
impracticable people then, as now ; and if the com- 
mittee sent to quiet the matter succeeded in so 
doing, they must have had occasion for all their 
arts of pacification. 

It may also be interesting to note that the 
Synod, in 1751, enjoined upon all their churches 
to take up an annual collection for the purpose of 
propagating the gospel among the heathen ; and it 
appears from the minutes of the succeeding meet- 
ing of Synod, that this church, as well as others, 
did take up the required collection ; and the sum 
so raised was put into the hands of Eev. John 
Brainerd, for the support of missions among the 
Indians, chiefly in New Jersey and in Eastern 
Pennsylvania. It would be curious to know what 
was the amount of this early collection for the 
cause of missions. Mr. Smith's lively interest in 



78 FIRST cnxmcn, orange. 

the spread of tlie Gospel among the unevangelizecl, 
may be iDferred from his uniting with a number of 
other ministers, in this country and in Scotland, in 
a weekly and a quarterly concert of prayer for this 
end. 

But it would be unpardonable in me not to 
refer to Mr. Smith's connection with the college 
of New Jersey, of which he was a trustee from 
1750 till his death, in 1762; for a brief time its 
acting President ; and always its ardent and de- 
voted friend. With a brief account of this matter, 
I shall close these desultory remarks, already too 
protracted. 

The first charter of the College of New Jersey 
dated from the year 1746. It was actually organ- 
ized in May, 1747. Rev. Mr. Dickinson, of Eliza- 
bethtown, was its first President; and as Mr. 
Smith was engaged as his assistant, he may be 
styled the first usher or tutor in the college. Upon 
the death of Mr. Dickinson, within the brief period 
of four months after the organization of the col- 
lege, it was removed to Newark, and placed under 
the presidency of Rev. Aaron Burr, pastor of the 



INAUGUEAL ADDRESS. 79 

churcli in that place. The first Commencement 
was held in the ITewark meeting-house, when a 
class of six graduated ; one of the members being 
Hon, Richard Stockton, Chief Justice of the State 
of New Jersey, a member of the Continental Con- 
gress, and a signer of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. The second in iSTew Brunswick. The sub- 
sequent Commencements in I^ewark, generally in 
the Court House, until 1756. After which it was 
removed to Princeton, to the new edifice erected 
for it, named after "William, Prince of Orange, 
IlTassau Hall. 

President Burr dying two days before the first 
Commencement in Princeton, Rev. Caleb Smith 
preached his funeral sermon, by appointment of 
the Board of Trustees ; a discourse which was sub- 
sequently published at their request. Jonathan 
Edwards being chosen Mr. Burr's successor, Mr. 
Smith and John Brainerd were, by vote of trustees 
of the college, requested to go to Stockbridge, to 
attend the ecclesiastical council to convene relative 
to his dismission, with the view of obtaining his 
release from the Indian congregation to which he 



80 FIRST CETIRCIl ORANGE. 

was at that time ministering. The untimely death 
of Mr. Edwards, which occurred about two months 
after he reached Princeton, left the college once 
more without a head. A President was accord, 
ingly chosen, and Mr. Smith placed upon the com- 
mittee to make arrangements for his removal. 
Meanwhile Mr. Smith was himself appointed to act 
as President of the college until the next meeting 
of the Trustees. At that meeting, it appearing 
that the President elect had declined, Mr. Smith 
was requested to continue to preside in the college 
until the next annual Commencement, and to con- 
fer the degrees upon the candidates. The Presi- 
dency of the college at that time involved not only 
giving instruction, and the oversight of the institu- 
tion, but preaching in the college chapel, which 
was the only place of public worship in Princeton, 
and was accordingly attended by the inhabitants of 
the town, and the pews rented to occupants as in 
other churches. During this time Mr. Smith con- 
tinued to preach one Sabbath in four in his own 
charge ; and the Synod directed the Presbytery of 
New Brunswick to assist, to their utmost, in sup- 



INAUGUBAL ADDRESS. 81 

plying his congregation. The choice of the Trus- 
tees next fell upon Mr. Samuel Davies, who first 
declined, but afterward accepted the appointment ; 
this favorable result being largely due, as it would 
appear, to the personal influence of Mr. Smith, 
who was upon the committee to secure his accept- 
ance and arrange for his removal. 

As an indication of the large and comprehensive 
views which were at that time entertained regard- 
ing education and educational institutions, and the 
schemes which were projected for their elevation 
and improvement, it is deserving of mention that 
Mr. Smith presented to the Trustees a plan of 
union among the several colleges in the American 
Provinces, which had been drawn up by President 
Clap, of Yale College. No action was taken upon 
this paper at the time, or subsequently, so far as 
is known. But I may say that this suggestion 
was recently renewed by President McCosh, of 
Princeton, in his inaugural address. I now quote 
the words of Dr. McCosh : " I have sometimes 
thought that, as Oxford University combines some 
twenty-two colleges, and Cambridge eighteen, so 



82 FIRST CmiRCn, ORANGE. 

tlicre might in this country be a combination of 
colleges in one university. * * * Some such 
combination as this, while it would promote a 
wholesome rivalry among the colleges, would at 
the same time keep up the standard of erudition. 
Another benefit would arise : the examination of 
candidates being conducted, not by those who 
taught them, but by elected examiners, \vould give 
a high and catholic tone to the teaching in the col- 
leges." There is no doubt that if this were prac- 
ticable, valuable and important ends would be 
accomplished by it. 

I have said enough to show that Mr. Smith 
yielded to none in his interest in the cause of 
education generally, and in his devotion to the 
welfare of the College of New Jersey, which was 
the child of the Synod, cherished by the whole 
body of the Presbyterian church, and whose name, 
without being exclusive or sectarian, has ever been 
identified with sound learning and with staunch 
Presbyterianism. 



MURAL TABLET. 83 



ERECTED NOV, 24, 1869, 

TO THE JIEMORT OF 

The FIRST TWO Ministers of this Parish 

REV° DANIEL TAYLOR 

His death, Jany 8, 1747-8, 

at the age of 56, 

Closed a pastorate of about 25 years. 



REV° CALEB SMITH 

Ordained and installed J^ov. 30, 1748, 
Died Oct. 22, 1762, 
Aged 39. 

Their remains await the resurrection amovq 

those of their flock in the 

Parish hurying-place. 



IV. 

HISTO^IC^L DISCOUK' 

BY 

REV. E. H. GILLETT, D. D. 




" This shall be written for the generation to come ; 

and the people which shall be created shall praise the 

Lord." 

Psalm cii: 18. 





HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. 




'HE life of an institution is not necessarily 
like that of a man, bounded by a period 
of three-score years and ten. If, like a 
local cliurcli, it has in it the elements of permanence, 
if its roots strike deep into the soil of social sym- 
pathy, if it is forever assimilating to itself the 
materials around it, it may endure for ages. It 
may see generations after generations pass away, 
and the moss gather on their grave-stones : it may 
look down on changes of dynasties and govern- 
ments : it may witness social and civil revolutions, 
forever young and fresh, while the hamlet becomes 
a village, and the village a city ; while the grandest 
structures of human art crumble to decay, and the 
records of centuries moulder back to dust. 

To stand by the side of such an institution, and 
to look up at it, is to invoke sacred memories of 



88 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. 

the past. And this is our position now. More 
than four successive generations, that have wor- 
shipped here, have passed away, and we gather, as 
it were, over their dust, to commemorate the 
progress and review the history of what they 
planted and cherished ; and under the shadow of 
this tree of centuries we look upward and around 
us, not to the spectacle of dead branches and 
withered leaves, but of freshness and vigor and 
verdure that have outworn decay. 

One hundred and fifty years ago ! The Presby- 
terian church in this land was then a feeble 
sapling, with uncertain prospects before it. It 
numbered about twenty-six ministers, and possibly 
some forty feeble churches. But there were those 
among its pastors then that have left behind them 
memorable names. James Anderson, just settled 
at New York, of whom the historian Wodrow, 
correspondent of Colman and the Mathers, speaks 
as " my old acquaintance," — Pumroy, of Newtown, 
Long Island, whose son, in the Great Revival of 
1740, was a friend of Whitefield, and a co-laborer 
with Wheelock and Bellamy, — John Thompson, of 
Lewes, Delaware, subsequently the leading member 



FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 89 

of what was known as tlie "Old Side," — Pierson, 
of Woodbridge, where he had labored for two years, 
the third in a line of ministers worthily held in 
high honor, — Robert Cross, just settled at ITewcas- 
tle, Delaware, but subsequently destined to larger 
usefulness at Jamaica, Long Island, and Philadel- 
phia, — William Tennent, the patriarch of l^esham- 
iny, the father of a ministerial household, who 
were to make the name famous to after centuries ; 
and among others, if last not least, " the great Mr. 
Dickinson," Jonathan Dickinson of Elizabethtown, 
a man who, by his rare gifts and graces, his learning 
and wisdom, was facile princeps among his brethren, 
and who was for his time the leading champion 
against the claims of a High Church Episcopacy, 
trusted and honored alike in his own field, in 'New 
England and in Scotland. 

Into association more or less intimate with such 
men came Daniel Taylor, the first pastor of the 
church of N'ewark Mountains, some four or five 
years after the church was gathered. To Dickin- 
son, especially, possessed of a kindred spirit and of 
the same political sympathies, he must have been 
strongly drawn. Both men combatted the claims 



90 FIRST CnURCn, OliANGE. 

of the Proprietors, Tvho made nothing of Indian 
deeds, and asserted rights of property which were 
accounted unwarranted and oppressive. Each was 
in more than an ecclesiastical sense the leader of 
his people, and each was an honored representative 
of popular rights. Dickinson died October 12, 
1747, and Taylor was spared for his work less than 
three months longer. 

If, as has been supposed, the organization of the 
church of Newark Mountains was helped forward 
by dissatisfaction with the Presbyterian sympathy 
or connection of the mother church of N'ewark, 
events had already occurred which tended to unite 
them in kindlier feeling. In 1738, Aaron Burr 
was settled at Newark, and iu the following year 
his labors were crowned with a powerful revival. 
Undoubtedly its influence extended to the church 
of Orange, and all questions of ecclesiastical sym- 
pathy were overruled by the questions which it 
excited. The " great work of God," as men like 
Edwards and "Wheelock termed it, had commenced, 
and it was destined to sweep with irresistible power 
throughout the bounds of the American churches. 
Denominational lines were now of but small ac- 



mSTORIGAL DISCOURSE. 91 

count. The division in the Middle States, as in 
New England, was between the friends and the 
opponents of the revival. Then came Gilbert Ten- 
nent's Nottingham Sermon, and stormy sessions of 
the Synod, protests and counter protests, till the 
Old Side and the New Side drew apart in the 
division of 1741. Then the New Brunswick Pres- 
bytery became the champion of the new religious 
movement, and responded to the calls of Con- 
necticut churches, that favored the revival, to sup- 
ply their pulpits. Then came the persecuting 
Connecticut laws of 1742, by which young Finley, 
subsequently President of the College at Prince- 
ton, was arrested, and sent as a vagrant beyond the 
limits of the colony ; laws which forbade David 
Brainerd to show his face at New Haven for fear 
of imprisonment ; laws which dogged the steps of 
many a minister, and virtually silenced him ; laws 
which sent several of the most devout and fervent 
pastors of Connecticut out of the colony, to find, 
within the bounds of the Presbyterian church, a 
freedom that they could not hope to enjoy under 
the shadow of a church trammeled by the State.* 

* At this point the speaker quoted from the " Historical 



9a FIRST CnURCH, ORANGE. 

la such circumstances, men who might other- 
wise have lived and died Congregationalists, could 
remain such no longer. They became exiles from 
their former homes, that under the Presbyterian 
system they might enjoy a freedom which could 
not be allowed them as pastors of Connecticut 
churches. Into this region they came, and met a 
hearty welcome. There was no State church here. 
There were no ecclesiastical laws, made by the 
civil authority, to interfere with the free discharge 
of their duties, and they gladly accepted the privi- 
leges which were offered here by the friends of the 

Sketch of Religious Liberty in Connecticut," (His. Magazine, 
July 1868, pp. 9, 10,) as follows : 

"In the diary of David Brainerd, for September 1742, we find 
that he had preached for the Separatist Church, organized in 
New Haven in the preceding May, (5th) by Jost>i:)h Bellamy, 
Samuel Cooke, John Graham, and Elisha Kent. For this, he 
was informed that the civil authorities were seeking an oppor- 
tunity to arrest and imprison him. He desired to meet his 
friends at New Haven, but he dared only to venture to the 
house of an acquaintance at a distance from the town. * * * 
Thomas Lewis was a fellow student of Brainerd, graduating at 
Yale College in 1741. For him, zealous in the cause of the 
revival, there was no toleration within the bounds of Con- 
necticut ; and like Davenport, Symmes, Allen and others. New 



HISTORICAL DISCOTJBSE. 93 

revival, and under an ecclesiastical system which 
secured supervision of the churches without the aid 
of Governors or sheriffs. 

It was thus, that whenever the question of eccle- 
siastical connection or sympathy was raised, the 
Congregationalism of Connecticut, leaning on State 
patronage and support, represented church bond- 
age; and the Presbyterian system, independent of 
State aid or supervision, represented at once eccle- 
siastical liberty and sympathy with the revival. 

In such circumstances there could be no question 
on what side men like "Webb and the Brainerds, 

Jersey furnisliecl him a refuge, and in 1747 lie was settled at 
Bethlehem in that province. * h: * 

" He could not comjjlain of the character of those that suffered 
with him. A few months before, Samuel Finley, subsequently 
President of Princeton College, was sent by the Presbytery of 
New Brunswick to supply the churches formed at Milford and 
New Haven, which had put themselves under their care. For 
preaching at Milford, he was arrested and sent out of the 
Government as a vagrant. He returned and i^reached at New 
Haven, for which he was seized at the meeting house door, on 
Lord's day morning, and carried away by an officer. He re- 
turned again, and preached to the people. This is said to 
have induced the Legislature to enact tliat any minister who 
should do the like, should be imprisoned till he gave a bond in 
one himdred poimds not to do so again." 



04 FIRST CnURCH, ORANGE. 

Dickinson, Pierson, and doubtless we may add 
Taylor of Orange, long before liis death, would be 
found. A wonderful Providence had made ques- 
tions of mere church order or organization seem of 
small importance, and a Congregational zealot of 
that day would have seemed as much out of place 
here as a swallow in January. It is only at a later 
period that Jacob Green, of Hanover, perhaps the 
first man on the continent that called himself an 
Edwardian^ chose to take a position outside the 
pale of the Presbyterian church, there however to 
organize a new Presbytery on the voluntary prin- 
ciple, and assume the privilege, which the Synod 
denied, of sending others beside liberally educated 
men to work in the great field, whitening to the 
harvest. Seventeen years the division of the Old 
and New Side continued. In 1758 the parted 
streams mingled once more in a common current. 
Daniel Taylor had gone to his rest ; and Caleb 
Smith, a young licentiate, and a theological pupil 
of Jonathan Dickinson, was called (1748) to suc- 
ceed him. For ten j'cars previous to the reunion 
he was pastor at Orange, and doubtless was in full 
sympathy with the eftbrts that brought it about. 



HISTOBICAL mSCOUBSB. 95 

With him a new generation of ministers appears 
upon the stage. The church at large has rapidly 
increased. The ministry has multiplied, in forty 
years, nearly four-fold, and the churches doubtless 
in like proportion. The missionary spirit of the 
church has gone forth to new, larger, and more 
distant fields. McWhorter, of Newark, has tra- 
versed Virginia and the Carolinas on preaching 
tours. The saintly Brainerd, at the forks of the 
Delaware, has illustrated the triumphant power of 
the Gospel over savage nature, and has prayed, 
and wept, and preached, and worn out his feeble 
strength, in his apostolic work. Scarcely his infe- 
rior in devotion, his brother John, stationed for a 
time at Newark, has traversed the New Jersey 
Pines, and carried the Gospel to almost every 
heathen neighborhood. Ere long, Spencer, of 
Elizabeth town and Trenton, with a mind worthy 
of a statesman, and a heart large enough to take to 
its sympathy the largest plans of Christian eflbrt ; 
Beatty, on whose shoulders fell the mantle of the 
Patriarch of Neshaminy, and whose pioneer labors 
extended to the far-off banks of the Ohio ; Duffield, 
his worthy compeer, resolute, unflinching, daring 



96 FIRST CnURCn, ORANGE. 

to speak the boldest words which a Christian 
patriot might speak ; these, and many more, 
worthy to be associated with them, appear on the 
scene, gracing the missionary annals of the church 
with records of which their honored descendants 
may well be proud. Nor, at this juncture, should 
such names be forgotten as those of John Rodgers, 
the friend of "Whitefield, transplanted from the 
Southern field to New York, where he lived to lay 
his hand upon the head of one (Dr. Spring) whose 
long' protracted pastorate links the generation of a 
century ago to ours ; President Davies, the Vir- 
ginian Apostle, a model of pulpit eloquence, com- 
manding the admiration of lawyers in the courts 
where he appeared to plead the rights of Virginia 
" Dissenters," and extorting applause from the 
critical hearers of the old world where he urged 
the claims of sacred learning, and collected the 
means to endow Princeton College ; the Finleys, 
combining scholarship with piety, and giving point 
to the contrast drawn by the great Dr. Mason 
between the death-bed of the believer and that of 
the skeptic ; Bostwick, of New York, challenging 
from the historian Smith a tribute to his eloquence; 



HISTORICAL DISCOUHSE. 97 

Francis Alison, the most thorougli scholar of the 
day, whose plea for reuniou in 1758, recently 
republished, is inferior in force of argument and 
fervor of eloquence to no similar production of 
this recent period ; Samuel Buell, of Easthamp- 
ton, L. I., a friend of Edwards and Hopkins, 
Whose appeals could melt a listening assembly to 
tears, and whose wit could disarm even Tory inso- 
lence. And even with such a list, we must pas8 
over many with whom the second pastor of this 
church came in contact, and whose features and 
characters were photographed upon his memory, 
and treasured in his heart. 

But at the early age of thirty-eight he was called 
away by death ; and in 1766, after a vacancy of 
three or four years, he was succeeded by a man 
whose name has gone forth far and wide, and 
whose just fame is limited by no parish bounds. 
This man was Jedediah Chapman, doubtless a 
pupil of Dr. Bellamy, and one who was destined 
in another sphere to lay the foundations of many 
generations. 

The period of his ministry here, extending to 
the opening of the present century, is eventful in 



98 FIRST CHURCH, ORANOE. 

the history of the clmrcli and world at large. It 
began at the very time when the United Conven- 
tion of Presbj'terians and Congragationalists was 
formed to counteract the project of leading Episco- 
palians to impose Bishops on the Colonies, with or 
without the authority of Parliament. It closed 
when the plan of union between the two denomi- 
nations, that was intended to harmonize them on 
the great Mission Field at the West, was about to 
take effect. It began almost at the same time that 
the Stamp Act produced a revolutionary ferment 
throuiijhout the land. It closed when the thrones 
of Europe were shaking with the echoes of French 
cannons, and at the tramp of Napoleon's legions. 
It covered the period of our revolutionary struggle, 
and of the terrible revolution of France. It was 
characterized by national convulsions, the inroads 
of infidelity and error, and the outbreak of the 
powerful revivals in the South and "West. 

To events and scenes like these, the pastor of this 
church could not have been indifferent. Doubtless 
many a time the attention of his Sabbath audience 
was divided between his words, and the echo of the 
enemy's cannon, rolled back from these neighbor- 



HISTOBIGAL DISCOURSE. 99 

iog mountains. Many a time, doubtless, the con- 
gregation met on one Sabbath, uncertain whether 
the next should iiiul them gathered beneath the 
sacred roof, or scattered as fugitives from their 
desolate or plundered homes. The proximity of 
the enemy at New York must have been a constant 
terror. IIow precious must have been the truth 
which in such times pointed them to God as their 
refuge and strength, or directed their trembling 
faith to the Rock of Ages ! Then indeed the 
sanctuary was precious to them. Here the prayer 
of burdened souls, trembling at once for the liberty 
of the country and the Ark of God, went up to 
heaven. Ilere the faithful pastor, loyal to God and 
his country, inspired hope amid the thickening 
gloom, by the words of the divine promise. 
Hunted out himself by special malignity, and 
forced to flee for his life, with what power must 
his accents have fallen on the ears of those who 
knew his danger, and under the sense of what 
impending risks he spoke ! 

But another class of events soon claimed his 
attention. The Presbyterian Church, with the 
close of the war, was summoned to a survey of the 



100 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

desolations that had been wrought, and called not 
only to rebuild the old wastes, but to enter upon 
new fields. Almost contemporary with the organ- 
ization of the Federal Government, the General 
Assembly w^as constituted, and the Presbyterian 
Church was equipped, none too early, for a work 
that would tax all its energies. Population was 
rolling its vast tide westward. The nuclei of 
churches w^ere gatherino; in the wilderness. There 
was need of experienced and judicious men to 
shape the social elements of new regions, and after 
a ministry longer than falls to the lot of most men, 
Mr. Chapman was summoned by the voice of the 
Church to remove to a frontier post in the State of 
New York. Here for twelve years the patriarch 
toiled on, and the voice that had been heard here 
amid scenes of peace and scenes of conflict, was to 
speak the counsels of wisdom to the young min- 
istry that gathered around him. 

The pastor who succeeded Mr. Chapman was so 
intimately associated with the leading ministers of 
the church, and important events connected with 
it, that his life becomes largely a part of its history. 
He studied theology under Dr. Buell, the friend of 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. 101 

Edwards, completing his course under Dr. Living- 
ston, of ]!Tew York, the first theological professor, 
and one of the Fathers of the Eeformed (Dutch) 
Church. Ilis attainments, character and position, 
commanded respect, and the list of his intimate 
friendships would bring up such names as those of 
Griffin and Richards, Perrine and Armstrong, and 
scores of others, some of whom linger yet among 
us, venerable in usefulness as in years. But Mr. 
Ilillyer came not inexperienced into this field. He 
had endured hardness as a pioneer missionary. 
"With his own eyes he had looked upon the fields 
white for the harvest. He had traversed the 
forests of Central New York, and entered fully 
into the missionary spirit of the era that opened 
with the century. 

What a change was he spared to witness ! The 
single Synod of 1786, when he began his ministry 
at Madison, had grown to a General Assembly with 
many Synods. The membership of the church had 
increased from perhaps fifteen or twenty thousand 
to between two and three hundred thousand. 
"Within ten years after his settlement here, Prince- 



102 FTitsT cnmtcn, orange. 

ton Seminary was established, and it had to the end 
no firmer friend than he. A few years later Auburn 
• was founded. And how his heart must have 
glowed to hear of the Union Theological Seminary 
in Virginia, Marysville in Tennessee, Allegheny at 
Pittsburg, Lane at Cincinnati, Union at New York 
— until whole States, that were a wilderness when 
he came here, had become the strongholds of the 
Presbyterian church. 

In the grand movement that helped all this for- 
ward he took a leading part, and he had, moreover, 
his share of burden and trial. It might seem as if 
the rage of partisan feeling or prejudice might 
have spared one as inoffensive and gentle as Hill- 
yer, but amid the recriminations of that period, 
when the imputation of sympathy with New Eng- 
land theology sufiiced in some quarters to condemn 
a man, even Ilillyer was marked for reprobation. 

It is instructive now, though perhaps not very 
entertaining, to go back to those days when the 
now venerable Dr. Spring was accounted a heretic, 
and only received to the Presbytery in the confi- 
dence that, if gently dealt with, he would be 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. 103 

brought to entertain sounder views, or in part by 
the bold and generous declaration of Dr. Miller, 
"you may reject that young man, if you see fit, 
but in condemning him, you will condemn me;" 
to those days when the Rev. (Dr.) Ely published 
his contrast between Calvinism~and Hopkinsianism, 
and Dr. McLeod gave evening lectures to his 
people to fortify them against the terrible heresy 
implied in the latter; to those days when the 
writer of the " Triangle," lighted up with wit and 
sprightliness all the obscure inconsistencies that he 
thought he could detect in ultra Calvinism, and the 
Young Men's Missionary Society, of New York, 
was rent in twain on the question of commissioning 
Rev. (Dr.) Cox, whom the Presbytery of Philadel- 
phia had counted unsound in the faith. But it is 
instructive, at least, now that the stormy partizan- 
ship of the time has passed by, to see how good 
men misapprehended one another, and to note how 
on both sides were found names that divide about 
^equally our respect. 

From a contemporary publication, (Historical 
Sketch of Opinions on the Atonement, 1817,) a 



104 FIRST CHUIiCn, ORANGE. 

goodly octavo volume, I quote as follows : " Error 
spreads, and the great interests of the Redeemer's 
kingdom are compromised. Gentle measures have 
been tried, and have failed. It may be thought 
the Theological Seminary will correct the evil, and 
no doubt it will counteract the operations of error- 
ists; but its progress will be slow; and it is even 
possible the Ilopkinsians may obtain its direction, 
for an unwise policy, called peaceful, has already 
given Mr. Spring, Dr. Richards, and Mr. Hillyer a 
seat in the board." 

Such was the published estimate, at that date, of 
Dr. Ilillycr, and yet through all the bitter strifes of 
twenty years later — with the exception of a single 
year — he retained his seat in the Seminary board. 
Sadly must he have felt the alienations and sus- 
picions of the period of the division of the Presby- 
terian church, and gladly would he have welcomed 
the era of peace and union that has dawned at last. 

But with all the clouds that gathered over and 
around him, he was not left without more than the 
consolations of a peaceful conscience. lie lived to 
note the growth and extension of the church in this 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. 105 

and in otlier lands. lie saw the introduction of 
Sabbatli Schools. lie participated in the formation 
of Bible, Missionary, and Tract Societies, the glory 
of the age. lie was rewarded by witnessing revival 
after revival, which gathered harvests of souls into 
the church over which he watched with such devo- 
tion and fidelity. 

The close of Dr. Ilillyer's ministry brings us 
down to a period within the memory of those who 
yet survive, and who can recall his farewell words 
and counsels of peace. Of his immediate succes- 
sors, White and Iloyt, the memory of many of you 
keeps a fuller and fresher record than can be traced 
by the pen. The last-named of these was my class- 
mate and friend, and in his unassuming manner, 
sound sense, thorough scholarship, and devoted 
piety, it was always safe to confide. I might pay a 
warmer tribute to his worth, if I was at liberty to 
open the record of personal afflictions and private 
sympathies. 

We have now passed hastily through the succes- 
sive stories of the historical structure with which 
this church is identified. TVe have simply caught 

7 



106 FIRST CEURCE, ORANGE. 

glimpses, as we have looked forth from the win- 
dows, of the scenes on which the generations gazed 
that have passed on before us. Shall we not now 
jro and look to the east and to the west, to the 
period that preceded the founding of the church, 
and to that future that expands dimly but grandly 
over our horizon ? 

Surely one cannot walk along the crest of these 
three last half centuries, without pausing at either 
end, and regarding the contrast which a view from 
each presents. The founders of this church stood 
in immediate proximity to scenes and events of 
deepest interest in Presbyterian history. Less than 
a half century before, New York was a Dutch 
colony, and on the whole Atlantic slope, Presbyte- 
rianism had scarcely a foothold or a name. Con- 
gregationalism — with a leaven of Presbyterianism, 
represented by such names as Colman and Stod- 
dard, and the father of the elder Edwards — was the 
established church in Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut. Episcopalians and Quakers, and a few scat- 
tered Baptist churches, were asking for a measure 
of toleration that would exempt them from the 



mSTORICAL DISCOURSE. 107 

society or town tax for the support of ministers on 
whose services thej did not find it edifying to 
attend. By a stretch of usurpation, Lord Corn- 
bury, vieing with the bigotry of the Stuarts, had 
secured in New York the state establishment of 
the Episcopal church. He had thrown into a E'ew 
York prison — and kept him there for weeks, 
releasing him only on the payment of exorbitant 
costs — Francis Makemie, the Father of the Amer- 
ican Presbyterian church ; and he had done this for 
the mere crime — with which he was charged — of 
preaching a Presbyterian sermon in a private house 
in Pearl street. At Jamaica, L. L, he had thrust 
out the Presbyterian minister, to make room for 
an Episcopal incumbent, with no better right than 
the authority of bayonets. Among the founders of 
the Orange church there must have been some few, 
at least, on whose memories outrages like these 
had left a deep and still vivid impression, and who 
needed not to go to the Old World to find how 
little religious liberty was understood or practiced 
by men in power, even on this continent. 

But almost as fresh, too, on the page of memory, 



108 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

were traced the leading facts of that more than 
romantic, that terribly tragic story which for nearly 
two consecutive generations had constituted the 
record of Presbyterianism in Scotland and Ireland. 
The founders of this church may well have con- 
versed with those who shared the siege of Derry, 
or listened to battle songs or gospel messages, 

" By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured 
In sweetest strain." 

It can scarcely be, that in their childhood some of 
them had not heard the story of bloody Claver- 
house and his dragoons ; or of Richard Baxter 
arraigned, to be insulted by the monster Jeffries 
for deeds of Christian service for which we honor 
him; or of English prisons filled with men like 
Joseph Alleine, or John Bunyan, of whom the 
world was not worthy ; while the caustic but well- 
dissembled irony of Defoe's "Shortest way with 
the Dissenters," and the unreasoning bigotry and 
excitement that characterized the period of the 
trial of Sachevernell, and the national convulsion 
that resulted from the attempt to restore the Stu- 



HISTOBICAL DISCOURSE. 109 

arts to the Euglisli throne, were things of yester- 
day. If we could have seated ourselves by the 
fireside of the more intelligent and thoughtful of 
the men who first stood forth here to profess them- 
selves the Lord's freemen, we might have heard 
them speaking now of the victories of the great 
Marlborough, and now of the Indian wars at the 
North and the South, and still again of Presbyte- 
rian exiles from Ireland seeking a refuge on these 
shores, and the probabilities that attempts would 
be made here to deprive them of their religious 
rights. Perhaps the conversation turns on Corn- 
bury's iniquities, and the vain attempt of the Pres- 
byterians of New York city to secure themselves 
a charter of incorporation, in which they were 
opposed and defeated by Trinity Church ; and per- 
haps they expressed no idle or shallow fear that the 
time might come when ecclesiastical usurpation 
would reach its long arm across the ocean, and lord 
it over the consciences of men who had hoped to 
find a safe asylum here. However this may be, 
nearly one hundred years before Connecticut laws 
allowed equal liberty to all sects, and more than 



110 FIUST CIIUECn, ORANOE. 

that, before Massachusetts adopted the principle, 
these fathers of the Orange church, inheriting the 
principle for which the Scottish martyrs before all 
others had suffered and contended, that every 
church has a right to choose its own pastor, and 
manage, in subordination to the common interests, 
its own affairs, embodied in their organization and 
vindicated in their practice the great central truth 
of ecclesiastical autonomy, so strangely overlooked 
for generations, but on this soil never to be lost 
sight of again. 

With something of fear and trembling they 
gathered up the lessons of the past. The clouds 
were still piled up on the eastern sky, which spoke 
of the tempests of wrong and outrage which the 
preceding generation of Englishmen had felt in 
their full severity. What a future might still be 
before them they could not tell, but they had abun- 
dant reason to be jealous of their rights, and guard 
with vigilance their sacred trust. 

But where do we stand to-day, and what is the 
prospect that opens before us ? The feeble one 
has become a host. The Presbyterian church in 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE. Ill 

tliis country, divided once and again, is at length 
reunited. Its history is enriched with grandest 
names. Turn over its pages, and you shall meet 
there the portraits of Makemie, Dickinson, Burr, 
Edwards, Davies, Witherspoon, Mason, Griffin, 
Blackburn, Alexander, Miller, Eichards, and 
scores of others, the very mention of whom 
brings up before us all that is venerable in char- 
acter, or high and pure in purpose, or command- 
ing in eloquence. "Where there was a feeble 
sapling once, swaying with every blast, there 
stands now a broad trunk, with its roots strong 
and deep in our own American soil, but with 
branches spreading out their sheltering shade over 
a continent. The Presbyterian church in this land 
is, in respect to numbers, intelligence, moral influ- 
ence, educational institutions, one of the most pow- 
erful organizations in the land. If it is faithful to 
its trust, faithful to the pledge given over and over 
again in the history of its past endeavors, the gen- 
erations that follow you here shall witness a future 
for it, so cheering, so sublime in achievement, so 
extended in influence, that the contrast of its germ 



112 FIRST CmmCH, ORANGE. 

and development shall make romance seem tame, 
and invite upon it the benedictions of angels and 
men. It will expand its field of effort with the 
country's growth. It will apply its energies with a 
self-denying zeal. In all the centres of arts, and 
and commerce, and social life, it will be found at 
work, originating churches and institutions that 
will regenerate society, and stand as witnessing 
monuments of God's truth, till the grand work of 
human redemption is complete. 

With such a prospect the actual history of this 
church links that day of small things, when its 
fathers, feeble in means and small in numbers, laid 
here the foundations of many generations. Look 
to the past, and then to the future, and you will 
feel that you stand upon a Pisgah. Close by you 
on the one side is the weariness and desolation of 
the desert ; on the other is Canaan promise, and 
the near and ever nearer advent of that Jerusalem 
which is from above, which is the mother of us all. 
"We breathe the purer air of a higher life. We 
look down upon periods of strife and division, and 
lament our errors. We look upward and invoke 



HISTORICAL BISCOUBSE. 113 

the grace that will perfect our union, by the same 
influences that cement and secure the eternal union 
of the blessed. 

It is well that we may meet for our commemora- 
tive task at a day like this. It lends inspiration to 
the occasion. Our fathers would have rejoiced to 
see this day, and been glad. IIow their silent 
benedictions seem to distil upon us, as in our 
thanksgivings we recognize the grace that has 
triumphed over division, and made the reunited 
church what it is to-day ! If those who have toiled 
here, and borne the heat and burden of the day 
— who have been associated with the trials and the 
hopes of the past — could appear among us, with 
what radiant spirits, with what hearty God-speeds, 
would they greet us, swelling our joys while they 
fulfilled their own ! 

They are not with us in person — however their 
spirits may hover near. They will not come back 
to us, but we shall go to them. And what a lesson 
to inspire us to high endeavor, that we may recount 
what their feebleness has achieved, and may say, 
as we do to-day, that over these graves, these hal- 



114 



FIRST CETmCH, ORANGE. 



lowed scenes of prayer and praise, these spheres of 
toil and trial, there waves the banner of a reunited 
church, there gather associations and memories 
that make the ground we tread seem holy, there 
come thronging clouds of witnesses whose pres- 
ence in thought we could not and would not 
banish. 




i. V..-- ^ - 



.Christian hm- 

OF 

MADISON, New Jersey 



Y. 



ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 




Remember the days of old; 

Consider the years of many generations." 



Deut. 32 : 7. 



POEM. 




^f^^^ICTURES OP OTHER Periods : these to-night 
I bring to place before your waiting sight ; 
And here the Present shall its sunlight cast 
Ui3on the lengthening shadows of the Past : 
Each varied hue, and interblending part, 
Have power to please, and elevate tlie heart ; 
And all combined make one harmonious whole, 
To stir the pulses of the grateful soul. 



Behold a picture of the days of eld, 

When these broad lands the Fathers first beheld ; 

And by the waters of Communipaw 

The Burgomaster first the Yankee saw, 

And little dreamed, as then their trade began, 

That he was dealing with the Coming Man, 

Whose restless feet but touched New England's shore, 

And thence departed to return no more. 

But ever onward with resistless sway, 

From age to age would Westward make his way ; 



118 FIRST CmmCE, ORANGE. 

His hand the waste and desert soil subdue, 
And build the City where the Forest grew ; 
The Church and School plant firm in every vale, 
Where late was found tlie Indian's fire or trail ; 
That one by one there slowly might arise 
New States, as stars, to bless the Nation's eyes, — 
From where the waters of the Hudson rolled. 
To San Francisco's opening Gate of Gold ! 

Where the Passaic like a silver thread. 

Winds through the marshy meadows to the Sound, 
Your Fathers, by the Great All-Father led, 

Planted the seeds, whose fruitage here is found. 
Stern in their will, of shnple faith and pure. 
They for His cause would any ill endure : 
His was the World — dare any one exi^ect 
To rule the State, save only His elect ? 
Such was their creed — a life and not a name. 
And here to found their perfect State they came : 
Who would might come, in peace securely dwell, 
And sow and reap, or fi'eely buy and sell 
Under just rule — so did their laws denote — 
While none but Saints should have the right to vote ! 

Just to themselves, to others they were true ; 
The Indian at their hands no outrage knew ; 



POEM. 119 

They took his lands and paid as they agreed, 

And had from him a primal title deed 

For these fair lands, that from the river shore 

Break at the mountain ; full many a score 

Of miles of wood and undulating plain, 

And valleys low, by purchase did obtain. 

And this the j)rice : if there be brokers here. 

Who put our house-rent higher every year, 

Give your attention, lend me now your ear. 

And I in verse the jDrice will here relate, 

Of this great sale of Orange Real Estate ! 
Fifty double hands of powder, and one hundred bars of lead ; 
Twenty ankers of good liquors, or equivalent instead ; 
Twenty coats and twenty pistols, and of swords and kettles ten ; 
Fifty knives ; ten pair of breeches for the most distinguished 

men ; 
Full eight hundred feet of wampum, and four barrels of good 

beer. 
And three troopers' coats : — Fm sure yoii do not think the pur- 
chase dear; 
But rather that your fathers were unwise. 
They did not buy, and hold it for a rise ! 

From river's marge back to the mountain's foot, 
They built their homes, the cottage and the hut ; 
The rich, a house in length but thirty feet 



120 FIRST CEmtCn, ORANGE. 

And twenty wide, found ample and complete ; 
"While for the poor, two rooms, or three at best, 
Met every want, if God became the guest. 
No brocatelle in gilt and carved wood, 

Made of the home a most essential part ; 
No mirror on a sculptured mantel stood — 

The uneven walls were bare of works of art. 
The whitened floor, and simple oaken chair, 
The dresser and the shining platters there, 
The chest of drawers, with common oblong chest. 
And spinning wheel at motion or at rest, 
With table polished by the scrubbing broom, — 
These were the features of the living room ; 
In next, the bed where wearied ones laid down, 
To sweeter sleep than he who wears a crown ; 
While near the shelf, on which the Bible lay, 
God's angel stood to guard them night and day. 

They little knew of other lands and men, 
Nor sought for knowledge deemed beyond their ken 
They saw no wicked spirits in the air. 
Nor tracked the hated Indian to his lair ; 
While day by day they went the common round 
Of duty, and God's blessing sought and found. 
Beside the church they reared the public school. 
And ruling self, could others wisely rule ; 



POEM. 131 

The good protect and hold the bad in awe. 
Not by the Civil but the Higher Law ; 
Forsook some errors of their earlier days, 
And walked in broader and more liberal ways ; 
The rights of conscience fully did accord, 
Nor held the Church as greater than its Lord ; 
While evermore their life this truth disjjlayed, 
That God, not man, is first to be obeyed ! 

Unlettered men ! whose names are known to few, 
Ye builded broader than ye thought or knew : 
"While wary Statesmen and ambitious Kings 
Worked out their problems, aimed at meaner things, 
Spread to the world each wide embracing plan, 
Regardless of the sacred rights of man. 
Ye in the forest, all to them unknown. 
Assumed a power still greater than the throne ; 
As stone by stone, with none to make afraid. 
Those deep foundations were securely laid, 
On which your children at a later date 
Should rear the fabric of a nobler State ! 

Full fifty years each Sabbath day had seen, 
With shining faces and becoming mien, 
The settlers here to Newark take their way, 
There in God's house the solemn vow to pay. 
But now in numbers slowly stronger grown, 

8 



122 FIRST CHURCH, ORANOE. 

They would build up a meeting of their o^ii, 
True to their Order, firm as Plymouth Rock, 
And wholly made of Congregational stock ; 
For oh, most sad to think and sad to say. 
The Newark Church had gone another way ; 
While loving Cambridge, honoring Saybrook too, 
It long had sought thu special work to do — 
T' absorb Westminster, with those lights full orbed- 
But in th' attempt had been itself absorbed ! 

'T was but the law ; such efibrt could but fail. 
The right must ever in the end prevail ! 
Tiiat which succeeds within a narrow bound, 
In wider circles oft is wanting found. 
This Order on New England's sterile soil. 
Bears goodly fruit, repays the patient toil ; 
The tree transplanted into broader fields. 
Grows sickly, and but little fruitage yields, 
Till grafted on the Presbyterian tree, 
(As has been shown in many a learned D. D.,) 
It has a life that winter cannot kill, 
While summer heat new juices doth distill : 
And if it will not th^is consent to grow, — 
Hut I forbear : the Mountain church you know 
Tried it full long— but failed to make it go. 
If there be friends of tliib old Order here. 



POEM. 123 

I trust their duty has been macle so clear 
That here and now their grafting may begin, 
While we are waiting to receive them in ! 

Look now, my friends, behold with thankful eyes, 
The Mountain Temple of the Lord arise ! 

No skillful Architect had drawn his plan — 

No estimates had skillful builders made ; 
No keen trustees been set the work to scan, 

Or borrow money in the Marts of Trade ; 
The ladies had not even held a fair . 
To buy the carpets and the pulpit chair, 
Or named committee, say of three or five, 
To fan their funds and keep the flame alive 
When men refused to give, and that outright, 
As trade was dull and money very tight : 
But rare Old Pierson, tyi^e of those who wrought 
The work of God, because they knew they ought, 
Nor stoi^ped to parley, wasting half their day 
In frequent asking if the work would pay ; — 
He and his friends on holy purpose bent. 
Their little skill and cheerful labor spent. 
The axe and wedge apart the timber tore. 

The noisy saw divided it again ; 
The augur made its round and perfect bore. 

While swiftly moved the ready smoothing plane, 



124 FIRST cmntcn, orange. 

Till all was done, and God by them was praised, 
In those rude walls they by His help had raised. 

Would that I had the pencil and the skill, 

The Opening Service fitly to portray ; 
How would your eyes with tears of gladness fill, 

Your hearts leap up as theirs to sing and pray. 
The gray haired sire, the bronzed and stalwart son. 
The stooping mother and the bashful maid, 
"With little children, quiet now and staid. 
Had in their places gathered, one by one. 
No organ peal disturbed the solemn air. 
No anthem ushered in the opening prayer ; 
First on the ear, stretched to its true intent. 
Broke th' full voice of him whom God had sent : 
They at its summons rose with reverent mien. 

The head bowed low, the heart too full for si^eech, 
"While on the wrinkled face there might be seen 

A look that compassed heaven in its reach, 
As from the preacher's lij^s there outward went 
Words that on wings of praise were heavenward sent. 
And when he ended with his full Amen ! 
From trembling lips it faintly rose again. 

The time would fail, were I to linger here. 
And in detail portray each passing year ; 
How from the East, sountl in the fiiith, to claim 



POEM. 125 

Their loving homage, Daniel Taylor came — 

For thirty years these paths of duty trod, 

Fearless of man, but in the fear of God : 

As poor man's friend, and to th' oppressed a shield, 

To might, as wrong, was never known to yield, 

While he with zeal made known the Gospel plan. 

And all the " wondrous ways of God to man." 

When from the East far to the South and West, 

The restless foot of Whitelield onward pressed, 

Then when the spirit of the Lord came down 

The labors of the toiling ones to crown, 

Here in the Mountain were His wonders shown, 

In quickening saints, in turning hearts of stone, 

And Taylok saw the glory of the Lord, 

And years of waiting brought the large reward. 

In patient service thus he kept the Faith ; 

The good fight fought : triumphant was in death ; 

And this his praise : When with the dead he slept, 

His memory green was by his people kept. 

I ask you now to look again, and see 
What was, what is not, what again should be ; 
The Parsonage, early reared by willing hands, 
With ample marge of wood and meadow lands ; 
Whereto in time a youthful pastor* came, 

♦ Rev. Caleb Smith. 



126 FIRST CETdRCE, ORANGE. 

"With her wliose ftithei-f bore an honored name, 
Whose praise in all the churches could be found, 
Whose zeal for God no limit knew or bound, 
Wlaose weighty words and cogent argument 
With vital force straight to the conscience went, 
While clear in doctrine, ever apt to teach, 
With sweetest grace could simplest Gospel preach. 

Trained in such school, by such a master taught. 
The second pastor learned to shape his thought, 
And hither came, in all the grace of youth, 
Its ardent zeal, and glowing love of truth. 

About that Parsonage of those days long gone, 

What memories cluster, and what scenes are drawn ! 

What else we see, where'er our steps may roam, 

We find no simpler, see no happier home. 

Could those long fallen walls articulate, 

And all their prisoned secrets here relate. 

Or on the canvas, with the pencil throw 

The scenes they witnessed in the years ago ; — 

Of grief or joy, of love or hope defen-ed. 

All then withlield, all that was there conferred, — 

The secrets told, the errors full confessed. 

With treinbling lips, or sobbings unsuppressed, — 

t Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, of Ellzabethtown. 



POEM. 127 

Your hearts would alternate 'tv?ixt hopes and fears, 
One moment sanguine, and the next depressed, 
And laughter come unbidden on your tears ! 
Yet there the round that every morning brought 
The press of care, some useful lesson taught ; 
And there the Pastor wisdom daily learned, 
Which to account he in the pulpit turned ; 
While in his own he would his people show 
A Christian Home, the sweetest spot below, 
Not free from ill, that is the common lot, — 
How could he serve if here he had it not ? — 
Where every joy might have a keener zest, 

No state that did not bring with it content, 
Since all that came was timely, for the best, 

And by the loving Lord in mercy sent. 

I jjass the scenes wherein you might behold 

The new and larger church supplant the old : — 

Look on the people fasting, and at prayer 

That God would come their well-beloved to spare, — 

Then turn once more, where slow the funeral train 

Winds to the grave, and leaves the dead again. 

The Pastor's work was done : he had possessed 

The promised land, and entered into rest. 

Ah ! well they loved him : precious memories kept, 

Though side by side he now with Taylor slept ; 



128 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

And here to-day your love with theirs is shown, 
In fitting words, and monumental stone ! 

The Mountain Church was wise to understand 

No field's well ploughed without a guiding hand,- 

And so with decent haste set out to find 

One true in farrow, and of ready mind 

To do the work : and, strange though it may sound, 

They thought he in New England must be found. 

There straight, with letters to the Fathers, went 

A brother, on this purpose fully bent. 

Not type of some who in this later day 

Hunt for a Pastor, knowing not the way : 

Their trials sore, and disappointments keen. 

You have, my friends, too often, often seen. 

No easy task, in these swift days of ours. 

To find a man jjossessed of all the powers, — 

The power to preach, with ampler powers to talk, 

Of pleasing manners and a graceful walk ; 

At funerals good, at parties full of life. 

With just the woman for a pastor's wife ; 

Who sage advice from no one will refuse. 

And raise the funds by filling up the pews. 

Not such as this your fathers went to seek. 
But one in doctrine sound, in spirit meek : 
They hated error, and no honeyed speech 



POEM. 129 

"Would answer, if be failed the truth to preach. 
Yet, to be honest, I should here relate 
He must speak well, and they were free to state 
That they New England's drawling tone did hate. 
At length in Chapman what they sought was found, 
A Pastor good, a preacher wise and sound. 
He came when ominous signs along the sky 
Foretold those days that noble souls would try ; 
He heard the voice that 'cross the ocean went — 
" You shall not tax if none may rejiresent !" 
He read in mystic lines on chest of tea 
The Captions of the Charter of the Free, 
And saw the flash, and heard the signal gun, 
That shook the world on plain of Lexington. 

Through those and all the years of noise and strife 

He did his work, nor counted dear his life; 

In Church and State, was true to God and man, 

Wise in his work, and honest in his plan : 

He saw the "War with all its tumults cease. 

The many States slow rounding into One, 
"While on the Church, God sent with days of peace. 

That power by which alone His work is done. 
I may not on long years of service dwell, 
Or speak of all so wisely done and -^eW : 
Enough that from your church another came. 



130 FIRST cmmcn, orange. 

Wliose altar-fire, though separate, was the same ; 
And he in public measures foremost still, 
Cheerful of heart, and sovereign in his will ; 
Though strong in speech, was careful how he wrought, 
And ever practiced what he clearly taught ! 

A single fact, a word of comfort here 
For those who cause of Woman's Rights hold dear, — 
Who'd lift the Angel woman to each place 
That Man now holds, that demon of the race ! 
When a good deacon of this church resigned 
His Treasurership, this record do we find : 
That to his daughter Esther, then a maid 
The sum of twenty shillings should be paid : 
And fixyts there were which made this duty clear, — 
She had the Treasurer been for many a year ! 
The old, old law, of Christian and of Turk, 
Man has the honors, woman does the work! 

One other picture, and I leave you then 
To memories that are fresh in living men. 

Awhile had Griffin, he of silvery tongue 
And heart of fire, served his Master here ; — 

What pathos on those lips there often hung ! 
What piercing notes to stir the soul with fear ! 

Then Hillyer came, with ample gifts and rare, 



POEM. 131 

Your fathers' work and generous love to share. 

Abundant labors, in unnumbered ways, 

Attest his virtues and prolong his praise ; 

Alike the rich, the needy or oppressed. 

Held him as friend, or welcomed him as guest ; 

No noble cause to which he did not lend 

The skill to do what faith could comprehend. 

These solid walls, this temple of the Lord, . 

His steadfast faith and patient toil record ; 

But dearer for those monuments of grace 

I in the fathers and their children trace ; 

Who now as then still rise to call him blessed, 

Who with them wrought till here they Christ confessed. 

I see him now, as down yon aisle he came, 
Up to the feast spread in his Master's name : 
Those emblems mute of body and of blood, 
How glad his heart as then and there he stood ; 
The earth afar, the hour so near at hand. 
When he beside his risen Lord should stand ! 
With feeble lips, and sweetest whispering word, 
The secret pulses of the people stirred ; 
Awhile with trembling hands the bread he brake, 
And bade them eat it for the Master's sake : 
And then, e'en while they wept, the cup he poured, 
And gave his final message of the Lord. 



132 FIRST CnURCn, ORANGE. 

'Twas his last service, fitting and complete, 
A hallowed scene, a memory rare and sweet. 

As one who through a crowded gallery strays 

"Where Art its master-i^ieces well displays, 

Observes each one, in each finds some delight, 

Yet holds them all within his wondering sight, 

Nor knows wliicli most he loves, or which is best, 

"What school is rarer, or is best expressed, 

Still finds in all a joy to carry thence, 

A loftier thought, a clearer, deeper sense, — 

So I, my friends, amid the Fathers here, 

Speak of the few, but all alike revere ; 

No wondrous name nor single life display, 

But equal honor imto all would jjay. 

Each did his work, each in his place has shown 

That which was wortiiy, and whicli should be known. 

Let us to-night these many names enshrine: 

TnEIU DEEDS DEROIC, AKD THEIR FaiTH StTBLIME ! 




VI. 



R,EV. J4MES !• 



W^TH 

RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS PASTORATE, 

BY 

STEPHEN WICKES, M. D., 

Member op Session. 



.^V,N.\ 




" He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious 
seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing 
his sheaves with him." 

Psalm cxxyi: 6. 





DISCOURSE. 




HE ministry of tlie Eev. Wm. C. White, 
the fifth pastor of this church, termi- 
nated by his resignation of his charge in 
April, 1855. During the most of the period of his 
honored and useful ministry, Orange, which then 
embraced within its limits all the present Oranges, 
and extended over the mountain to the town of' 
Livingston on the west, contained a somewhat 
sparse and rural population. About the time of 
his settlement, the historian describes the place 
as a straggling village and post-town, extending 
about three miles along the turnpike from Kew- 
ark toward Dover, containing two Presbyterian 
churches, one Episcopal, and one Methodist ; two 
taverns, ten stores ; two saw mills and a bark mill ; 
and about two hundred to two hundred and thirty 
dwellings ; a large trade being carried on in the 



136 FiiiST cnuncn, oranoe. 

manufacture of leather, shoes and hats. The 
population of the township, four years before his 
settlement, was rated by the census at 3,887. The 
opening of the Morris & Essex Eailroad in the year 
1836, first run from Orange to Newark by horse 
power; and in less than a year thereafter by steam, 
through from Madison to Newark, connecting at 
that place with the New Jersey Railroad to New 
York, stimulated a new and hitherto unknown 
source of local growth. The facilities of inter- 
communication increased trade and manufactures, 
and began to invite new residents within its limits. 
These changes, at first slow in their influence, had 
begun, at the time of Mr. White's resignation, to 
exert a marked change in the character of the 
population of the town. The rapid increase of the 
metropolis in commercial growth, and the appro- 
priation of all the lower parts of the city to business 
purposes, rendered necessary the removal of the 
merchants' homes to the upper parts of the city, or 
to those towns contiguous which afforded conven- 
ient modes of transit. The business hours of the 
great city had begun to be regulated by the time 
tables of railroad and steamboat lines. The natural 



BIS COURSE. 137 

beauty of tbe Orange landscape, its hill and dale, 
its mountain slope, its elevation above tide water, 
and the perfection of its natural drainage, all com- 
bined to oft'er unusual attractions to those in search 
of a rural home. The quiet of the region, and the 
absence too of those influences which invite the 
sporting class, secured, to a marked degree, an 
increase of residents distinguished for their love of 
high moral and Christian iufl.ucnces. This infu- 
sion of a new and vigorously active Christian 
element exerted a marked effect upon all the 
Christian congregations of the town, and upon 
none more so than upon our own. 

It will thus be readily seen that when the suc- 
cessor of the faithful "White entered upon his labors 
in Orange, the church was in a transition state. 
The impulse and vigor of city life was being 
brought in contact and commingling with the 
slower and perhaps more substantial habits, nur- 
tured under the more quiet influences of rural 
occupations. Each element, the old and the new, 
had much to learn from the other, and the lessons 
of the period were cordially accepted by a church 

ever united and harmoniously striving to promote 
9 



138 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

its highest interests, for the honor of the Divine 
Master. 

The Rev. James Iloyt was installed the sixth 
pastor of this church on the 14th of February, 
1856. lie was the son of Jas. Taylor and Re- 
becca Hoyt, and was born in Greenfield, Saratoga 
County, :N'ew York, on the 7th of October, 1817, 
being the youngest son of a family of eight child- 
ren. His father, during the earlier years of his 
married life, was not a professor of religion. lie 
was brought to repentance, and to the exercise of 
faith in Christ, by the sudden death of his eldest 
son by drowning. This afflictive providence gave 
to the godly mother a pious husband, and to the 
children a pious father. The change in his charac- 
ter was at once manifest. Before his conversion 
he had little sympathy with the religious senti- 
ments of his wife, being inclined to adopt the doc- 
trines of Universalism. He once said to his son, 
that whatever change of views he might expe- 
rience in regard to religion, he knew that he should 
never become a Presbj'terian. He knew not him- 
self, nor the power of Divine grace. Upon his 
conversion, he became very decided in his Calvin- 



DISCOURSE. 139 

istic views ; united with the Presbyterian church 
in Galway, New York, and became, at once, an 
earnest and active church member ; often riding 
from seven to nine miles to attend the evenina: 
prayer meeting. lie was soon elected a ruling 
elder, and exercised the functions of his office till 
laid aside by disease. He was characterized by 
great firmness of moral principle, great argument- 
ative powers, and a most retentive memory. The 
godly parents lived to see their seven surviving 
children hopefully pious, and pleasantly settled in 
life. James, the subject of this notice, exhibited, 
when very young, a peculiar aptitude for learning. 
"When he was five years old, his father brought 
home, among other books, a copy of Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress, which was given to him. 
Pleased with his new book, he devoted himself to 
its study. The minister soon after visiting the 
family, in noticing the youngest boy, said to him, 
" I suppose that you will soon be old enough to 
read." " I can read already," he replied, and 
gave evidence of his ability by the ease and cor- 
rectness with which he read the book. As a child 
he was always frank, unassuming and kind. His 



140 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

brother says of him, " I know not that he ever 
quarreled in the least, with one of his playmates, 
and had he in early life professed piety, no one 
could have charged him with impropriety of 
deportment as a Christian." Once when sus- 
pected by another with an attempt to deceive, a 
companion came boldly to his defence, exclaim- 
ing, " boys, you know that James Iloyt never told a 
lie." His fondness for books, and the ease and 
rapidity with which he learned, induced his father 
to favor him in the acquirement of a liberal educa- 
tion. "When he commenced Murray's English 
Grammar, he committed it to memory with so 
much rapidity, that his teacher concluded that he 
was one of those who learned rapidly, and forgot 
so soon as learned ; and with this view, when he 
had completed the book, she turned to the com- 
mencement, and asked him, " What is English 
Grammar ?" he answered immediately, and con- 
tinued reciting until she handed him the book, 
saying that she had not time to hear him recite the 
whole. In the Sabbath School he was accustomed 
to recite from one hundred to two hundred verses 
of Scripture at one lesson. While he was pastor 



DISCOURSE. 141 

in Orange, he once remarked to a friend that the 
large amount of Scripture which he had committed 
to memory when a boy, was of great value to him 
in the preparation of his sermons. lie had also a 
good voice and ear for music, taking, while very 
young, the lead of the singing in public worship. 

In the summer of 1835 he left home, to enter 
upon a course of study preparatory to entering col- 
lege. While at the academy in Fairfield, New 
York, he made a public profession of religion. 
He stated at the time, that he had experienced no 
sudden change of feeling or sentiment, but that he 
believed that he was a Christian, and as such, he 
felt it to be his duty to take a more public stand 
for Christ, " and," said he, " henceforth I shall 
do so." 

lie entered the senior class in Union Colle2:e in 
1839. As a college student, he was especially fond 
of the languages, a knowledge of which he acquired 
with great facility ; and yet his knowledge of the 
mathematics was such, that his professor, at the 
close of a recitation, once asked him if the mathe- 
matics had not always been his favorite study, to 
which he gave a negative reply. 



142 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

Upon bis graduation at college, he immediately 
entered the Union Theological Seminary, at which 
he graduated in 1844, and was licensed to preach 
by the Third Presbytery of New York. Just after 
he was licensed, a friend says, " I remember with 
what a solemn expression he stated his feelings, 
when he entered the sacred desk to preach his first 
sermon ; said he, ' now, then, ice are ambassadors 
for Christ' A classmate remarked to me after- 
wards what a deep impression that sentiment, as 
spoken by him, had made upon his mind." 

Soon after his licensure, he was invited to supply 
the pulpit of the church in Ilarlem. While there 
he was visited by a committee from a church in 
Stanwich, Connecticut, inviting him to visit them 
and become their pastor, if it should prove to be 
mutually desirable. He was thereupon presented 
with a call from the church in Ilarlem, which he 
did not feel at liberty to accept. lie went to Stan- 
wich, and labored with such acceptance as to secure 
the warm affection of the church and congregation. 
While at Stanwich his lungs, which had become 
somewhat diseased during his course of prepara- 
tory study, became so seriously affected that a resi- 



DISCOmtSE. 143 

dence at tlie South was recommended by Ms medi- 
cal adviser. 

After visiting many of the principal cities of the 
Southern States, he was called to the First Presby- 
terian Church of Tuskegee, Alabama. lie was 
ordained as its pastor in 1846. The church being 
new and somewhat weak, he devoted himself, with 
no ordinary success, to the promotion of its growth. 
"While at Tuskegee he was married to Miss Frances 
L. Pratt, daughter of Dr. Linus H. Pratt, of New 
York. After a ministry of three years at this place, 
he resigned his charge. The reasons moving him 
thereto were partly pecuniary and partly those of 
health, and with the conviction that his usefulness 
might be greater in some other field of labor. 

He had always taken a deep interest in the 
education of the young, had been an early friend 
of common schools, and had done much for their 
improvement. lie had always been a successful 
teacher, and hoping that his health might be 
benefitted by the change, he accepted a position 
as principal of a large Female Institute under 
the care of Presbytery, at Talladega, Alabama. 



144 FIRST CnUIiCn, ORANGE. 

Here liis characteristic diligence and devotion to 
Lis work were shown, employing his time, in 
the school and out of it, for the good of his 
pupils. The moral and religious influence which 
he exerted over this institution was of a marked 
character. One of the trustees remarked that in 
Mr. Iloyt were embodied all the essentials of a 
successful teacher. During his connection with 
the Institute, he delivered a course of chemical 
lectures with experiments, also several lectures on 
education. One on " Religion in Schools," was 
published by the trustees. 

In 1853 he returned to the I^orth, with his wife 
and child. The signs of the approaching conflict 
were, even then, beginning to make his position 
uncomfortable, and his restored health led him to 
desire once more to eno-asce in the work of the 
ministry. The first winter after his return was 
spent in New York. lie then supplied the pulpit 
of the church in Stamford, Connecticut, and the 
following winter declined a call to become its 
pastor, and accepted an invitation to the First Con- 
gregational Church in New London, Connecticut, 



mSCOUHSE. 145 

as a colleague to the Rev. Dr. McIrwin. After au 
engagement of about nine months, he received a 
call from that church, but did not consider it suffi- 
ciently unanimous to warrant his acceptance. He 
soon after received a unanimous call from this 
church, and entered at once upon his ministry 
with this people. His diary, which records this 
new relation, has the following minute : "I am 
thus the second time a pastor — the shepherd of a 
numerous flock. Oh that I might ever feel the 
responsibilities which such a charge imposes, and 
so be led to the unfailing source of strength and 
wisdom. That I may suitably feed the flock, and 
lead them to the heavenly pastures, is my heart's 
desire and prayer to God." 

His entrance upon his ministerial work in Orange 
was marked by circumstances of peculiar and 
solemn interest. Only four days before his instal- 
lation, he had seen this House of God hung with 
the emblems of mourning, and filled by a sorrow- 
ing congregation. The servant of God, who for 
more than twenty-two years had ministered to this 
people, had been suddenly called to the heavenly 



146 FIRST cmmcn, ouange. 

rest. There were two coincidences. The first 
was, that his pastorate began in the same month, 
and the same week of the month, in which his 
predecessor's had commenced twenty-three years 
before. Had the installation occurred a day sooner 
the coincidence of dates would have been exact. 
The second was, that it took place in the same 
week with his burial. One minister at the altar 
was just carried out, as another was called to 
ofliciate in the same holy oflSce. In his first anni- 
versary discourse, alluding to these impressive 
events, he says : " I was taught that the pulpit is, 
like other places, but a step from the grave, and 
that I should do with my might whatsoever work 
God gives me to do. There was also something in 
such a juncture of events to support the faith of the 
church. Ministers die, but the ministry remains. 
The Word still lives, though tongues that have pro- 
claimed it become silent." "With such sentiments, 
he entered with his characteristic energy upon the 
responsibilities of his ministry in this church. 

It is less the design of this discourse to give a 
connected history of Mr. Iloyt's pastorate, than to 



DISCOURSE. 147 

furnisli such recollections as may illustrate its 
character, and to preserve such facts and incidents 
as may be worthy of being treasured in the future. 
If what is offered may prove to be somewhat desul- 
tory, it is hoped that it may possess more interest 
for an occasion like this, than a continuous history 
would afford. 

I notice first, the valuable contribution to the 
history of the church and of the town, entitled the 
" Mountain Society, a History of the First Presbyte- 
rian Church of Orange." This book was the out- 
growth of a resolution of the Session to compile a 
manual for the use of the members of the church 
and congregation. When the manual was pre- 
pared, the pastor was requested to preface the 
same by a concise history of the church, with a 
short notice of its former pastors. lie accepted 
the task, and entered upon its execution, not know- 
in o^ how large a field of historical research was 
before him. The work of publishing the manual 
was delayed for a considerable time, waiting for 
the short historical preface. It was finally fur- 
nished to the Session by the pastor, with the state- 



148 FIRST CEUnCn, ORANGE. 

ment that this little effort had so grown upon his 
hands, and he had struck so many historical veins, 
before unopened, that he preferred to prepare and 
publish a history by itself. Ilis book was given 
to the public in 1860. It was the result of much 
labor and research. As he says, when writing of 
it, " no one can appreciate such a labor, who has 
not personally undertaken it. The letters written 
in the way of eliciting information would of them- 
selves make quite a volume. Some scores of 
miles have had to be traveled in the parish and 
its vicinity, to gather names and facts and dates. 
The old graveyard has had to be visited, its dim 
monuments patiently cleared, and their inscrip- 
tions copied ; many an hour, or series of hours, 
has been passed in the company of these silent 
memorials of generations gone." All this, with 
searches into the old township records of Newark 
for two hundred years, and records of Presbytery 
and Synod, involved an amount of time and labor 
which led him, at times, to regret that he had 
undertaken it. The result, however, is the pre- 
servation of valuable material which would very 



DISCOURSE. 149 

soon have been lost, and famishes an enduring 
monument to his zeal for the honor of this ancient 
church, for which his name will be held in lasting 
gratitude. 

The Presbytery of Kewark, with which our 
church is connected, has for many years past taken 
a special interest in promoting the Christian wel- 
fare of the German population within its limits. 
In 1861 a German church in Paterson was made 
by Presbytery an object of its regard, and a 
committee was appointed to procure among the 
churches a sum of money sufficient to relieve it of 
its pecuniary burdens. The committee consisted 
of three, but it proved that the work was chiefly 
thrown upon our pastor, as the man best adapted 
to secure its success. He entered upon it, and by 
exchanges with the other ministers of Presbytery, 
and appropriating to the effort the time allotted to 
him for his summer vacation, he successfully com- 
pleted it, creating in his own mind a deep and 
lasting interest in the German population. His 
interest and efforts for this class of our fellow citi- 
zens continued while he lived. It was a remark 



i.jO first (jnuRcn, oranoe. 

not uncommon among his people, that Mr. lloyt 
had German on the brain. It was more true that 
he had the German on his heart, and its reflex 
action on his vigorous brain secured a large suc- 
cess to the cause he loved. In 1864 the Presbytery 
initiated the work of German church erection, 
fixing upon the sum of eight thousand dollars as 
the amount to be raised among the churches. To 
tliis end, Dr. Poor, late of N'ewark, was made 
chairman of the committee of Presbytery, and Mr. 
IToyt liis associate. It was expected by Mr. Iloyt, 
and by Presbytery, that the chairman would 
assume the chief labor of the work, but being 
very providentially laid aside by sickness, his asso- 
ciate assumed it. During the fall and winter of 
that year he presented the cause in the Second 
Church of Orange, in Caldwell, Montclair, South 
Orange, Plaintield, Mendham, Morristown, Bloom- 
field, in the five churches in Newark, and in his 
own church, preaching and taking collections 
fourteen times ; the pastors from these diflerent 
churches filling his pulpit in the morning, and 
where practicable returning himself to conduct the 



DISCOURSE. 151 

second service. Dr. Poor remarked to the writer, 
that he felt deeply disappointed at the necessity 
which disease had laid upon him to abandon any 
active agency in this efibrt, and invited Mr. Hoyt 
to present the subject to his own people, " "When 
I heard his admirable appeal," said he, " I felt 
that God had placed the matter in the best hands, 
and that its success was assured." The Presby- 
tery passed a vote of thanks to the committee, 
and in a resolution recognized the aid which this 
people had rendered, by generously allowing their 
minister to proceed with the enterprise through so 
long a time. " One efi'ect of this work," says Mr. 
Iloyt, in writing upon the subject, " has been to 
awaken attention to the heaving masses of foreign- 
ers that are displacing the old American residents 
of our large cities, and to the pressing importance 
of such mission work among the Protestant Ger- 
mans as will engraft them, (which may easily be 
done,) upon our American Protestantism. It is 
now a recognized fact that we have a great work 
of this kind to do." 

As a preacher, our pastor was much above the 



152 FIRST CnURCn, OBANOE. 

average. A Calvinist in his belief, his views of 
Christian doctrine were remarkably accurate. lie 
knew exactly what he believed, and could defend 
his faith by the most logical argument. His dis- 
courses were well studied and well written, with 
passages often of much eloquence and power. lie 
was not emotional, but presented truth in so clear 
and logical a form that it found a lodgment in the 
convictions and conscience of the attentive hearer. 
The great theme of his preaching was Christ and 
Ilim crucified, and around this primal truth were 
drawn the powers of his cultured mind. 

Nevertheless, possessing great force of character, 
with strong convictions, and with moral courage to 
proclaim and enforce them, he sometimes brought 
himself in collision with those whose sentiments 
were not in correspondence with his own. He 
was inspired with a broad view of his responsi- 
bilities as a minister of God, and with enlarged 
and accurate ideas of the relations of moral and 
religious truth. N"o considerations of personal 
popularity prevented him from meeting the de- 
mands of the times. Popular errors, vicious 



DISCOURSE. 153 

practices, social evils and national sins, met their 
fitting rebuke at liis hands. 

It stands to his honor as a citizen, and as a 
Christian minister, that his preaching was not 
always popular. As was said of him by one, not 
a member of his congregation, " Mr. Iloyt was a 
marked man, and he has left an enduring mark 
upon this community." The terse, doric record on 
that memorial tablet is historic of his work : " He 
died in the discharge of an honored and faithful 
ministry." 

lie had been our pastor about three years, when 

he was impressed with the belief that the insidious 
doctrines and evil tendencies of the so-called 
spirilunl manifestations, were exerting a disturbing 
influence upon the minds of some within the 
bounds of his own parish. Having, in a place of 
his former residence, witnessed the distracting 
efiects of such teachings in the breaking up of 
happy family circles, the insanity of their dupes, 
and the destruction of the solid foundations of 
Christian belief, he deemed it to be his duty to 
meet the error here; and on the 19th of June, 
10 



154 FIRST CUmtCU, ORANGE. 

1859, preached a most exhaustive and convincing 
sermon upon " the sin of seeking unto the dead," 
from the passage in Isaiah, viii : 19 : " And when 
thej shall say unto you, seek unto them that have 
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and 
that mutter : should not a people seek unto the 
Lord? for the living to the dead?" There was 
some diversity of sentiment among his people as 
to the propriety of discoursing upon such a sub- 
ject, and some were offended, but the Scripture 
instruction which it imparted, and the solemn 
warnings which it contained, settled the wavering 
minds and confirmed his people in the soundness 
of their Christian faith. 

About the year 1861 or 1862, a citizen of Orange 
and a member of his church, purchased a plot of 
ground within easy distance of the centre of the 
town, and leveled and graded it for the purposes 
of a Driving Park. When completed, the propri- 
etor, for the purpose of inaugurating it with some 
eclat, arranged his programme by offering pre- 
miums for the entry of trotting horses, thereby 
inviting the attendance of the habitues of the race 



DISGOXmSE. 155 

and trotting course. Tickets were issued and 
notices posted, to render the occasion as popular 
as possible. The proprietor called upon his min- 
ister, and gave him a ticket. He looked at it, and 
said, " Is this a respectable affair ?" " It is," said 
he, " if you will make it so." lie did not use his 
ticket. "What his thoughts were on the occasion 
may be judged by the sequel. The Driving Park, 
as such, did not prove to be a success, and a 
charter was obtained to incorporate the " Essex 
County Agricultural Society," the fairs and exhi- 
bitions of the same to be held at the Park. Under 
this charter " exhibitions " were advertised, in the 
County and in the New York City papers, for the 
4th of July, 1864. The entertainment promised 
was in fact that of a completely appointed race 
course, and designed to be so perfect, in fur- 
nishing the pleasures of the race, as to give the 
Orange Course a name and a place among others in 
the neighborhood of the great ciiy. On the third 
of July, it being the Sabbath, and the day before 
the exhibition, the pastor, against the advice of 
one of his warmest friends, came before his people 



156 FIRST CnxmCH, ORANGE. 

with, a sermon on horse-racing ; showed the evils 
of the race, its gambling tendencies, and the injury 
which it entails upon the morals of the community. 
He then took up the history of the proposed exhi- 
bition for the next day; showed that it had not a 
single agricultural feature to redeem it; spread 
over the desk before him the large posters which 
advertised the race, and warned his fellow Chris- 
tians and his fellow citizens of the iniquity which 
was about to be introduced into our midst ; and as 
a man of God, and the guardian of public morality 
and virtue, lifted up his standard against its vicious 
and corruptiug influences. He preached the same 
discourse, by request of the pastor, in the Second 
Church, in the evening. This bold and unusual 
measure caused much excitement in the conojreo^a- 
tion. The posters of the race-course, hung over 
the sacred desk in the face of the congregation, 
were considered a desecration of the place and of 
the sacred associations of the day ; and certainly 
they did look a little out of place ; but God's 
minister was behind them, and made them the 
occasion of earnest warning to the people. IIow 



DISCOURSE. 157 

far the faithful minister did right in all this, and 
how large a debt of gratitude the quiet town of 
Orange owes him, may be estimated by the fact 
that the writer of this, and others now present, 
heard the proprietor of that Park say to the minis- 
ter a year or two afterward, " that sermon of yours 
killed the lohole thing." 

Our minister was a decided friend of temper- 
ance. "When the social glass was offered to him, 
his reply was, " ]^o, I thank you, I am a Rechab- 
ite." He preached a series of sermons on the 
wine question, showing the nature of the wines 
of the Bible, and their uses. The discussion dis- 
played great and very accurate research, and was, 
in the estimation of many who heard them, as 
exhaustive and profound as anything which has 
been published upon the subject. 

I should do injustice to my subject and to the 
sentiments of those who hear me, if I did not 
allude to the relation which the pastor and his 
congregation held with reference to the late war 
of the rebellion. This pulpit sent forth no uncer- 
tain sound during the nation's trial, The pastor, . 



158 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

who had resided at the South and been intimately 
associated witli the people for a series of years, 
was profoundly impressed with the deep moral 
turpitude of slavery. He regarded U as the guilty 
cause of our civil war. Though never an aboli- 
tionist, so called, he was too true to every moral 
obligation, because obedient to every divine law, 
not to recognize the moral viper which had struck 
at the vitals of the nation. Never hesitating to 
give bold expression to his sentiments, like the 
patriot Chapman in the days of our fathers' revo- 
lutionary struggle, he roused the indignation of 
his people against the enemies of our government; 
and, like him, he stimulated the patriotism of the 
people, leading their devotions as, under discour- 
agements, they bowed in humiliation before God, 
and rejoicing with them as, for victories achieved, 
they raised their songs of thanksgiving. 

The doors of this edifice were open during all 
the war to welcome a community seeking unto the 
nation's God in sorrow and in rejoicing. Who can 
forget the inspiring peal of its bell as it rung out 
the victory at Fort Donaldson, and the spontaneoua 



DISCOURSE. 159 

gathering of a grateful people within these walls 
to render thanks to Almighty God for His mercies 
rendered ; and who that was oppressed with doubt 
and fear during the long, dark Fourth of July, 
1863, will cease to remember the first ring of rejoic- 
ing which sounded forth the success at Gettysburg? 
Let it not be understood that the other churches 
and congregations of the town were not in kindred 
sympathy. Almost all of them were imbued with 
patriotic devotion. The loyal sympathies of one 
of them* found expression in the erection of a 
flag staff beside the church, surmounted by a cross, 
beneath which, on every Sabbath day, the nation's 
flag was unfurled — a beautiful emblem of the 
purest loyalty— i^rs^, the cross ; next, our country. 
At the close of the war the session of this church 
adopted the following minute, and directed that it 
should be recorded in its book of minutes : 

" "We deem it due to the ancient church in which it is our 
privilege to hold office, to place upon its records an expression 
of our sentiments, and those of this church, relative to the four 
years' civil war now closed. 

First, We record the fact that personally, and as a session, 
* Grace (Episcopal) Church. 



160 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

during all the years of the war, we have been possessed with 
an unswerving loyalty and devotion to the Government of the 
United States, a conviction of the justice of its measures, and 
an abiding faith, under God, in the complete final success of 
our arms. 

Second. "We rejoice with thanksgiving to God, that as a 
result of the war our land is purged from the sin and curse of 
slavery. 

Third. "We bow in mourning before God, while we recognise 
His hand, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. President 
of the United States. "We gave him our individual votes; we 
remembered him at our praying altars ; we loved him as a pure 
and honest patriot ; we revered him as a wise President, and a 
far-seeing and cautious statesman ; we hand down his name to 
the future, as 

" One of the few, the immortal names 
That were not born to die." 

Fourth. This church and congregation have cordially sympa- 
thised with the pastor, who has fully represented their senti- 
ments in his outspoken and distinct expressions of loyalty, and 
in his utterances from the jDulpit and elsewhere condemning 
the rebellion ; in his prayers for the success of our national 
arms; and in his recent four weeks' service (^iu June) as a dele- 
gate of the Christian Commission among the military camps in 
and around Washington. 

In the result of the war we recognize bur high national 
destiny, and are profoundly sensible of the obligations laid 
upon the Church to meet the responsibilities of its high 
mission in tiiis new era of the nation's history." 

Adopted September 3, 1865. 



DI8C0JJB8E. 161 

The results of Mr. Iloyt's ministry indicate its 
successful character. When he entered upon his 
charge, the membership of the church was two 
hundred and fifty-three. There were added during 
his ministry about two hundred and eighty-three. 
The numbers brought in were thirty more than 
the number at the time of his settlement. Those 
dismissed from the church numbered one hun- 
dred and thirty-three; fifty-eight died ; three were 
excommunicated; making one hundred and ninety- 
four removed from the roll, leaving a net increase 
to the membership of about eighty. A revival of 
religion blessed his labors in the winter of 1857-8, 
the history and incidents of which are noticed in 
his published history. During his pastorate the 
church contributed to the cause of religious benev- 
olence the sum of twenty-six thousand dollars, in 
addition to the amount annually raised for the 
purpose of maintaining our own worship. 

The official changes which have taken place 
during his pastorate, are the election of four elders 
in June, 1856, whose names are noticed in his 
published history ; and five others in 1864-5. 



162 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

William 11. Dayton was added to the sessiou on 
October 16, 1864 ; and Edgar P. Starr, Henry N". 
Beach, David IL McCoy and Andrew Mason, on 
September 24, 1865. George Lindsley, Charles N. 
White and Ilorton D. Williams, were elected dea- 
cons June 26, of the same year. 

During the last ten years the church has fur- 
nished members, chiefly from within its own 
limits, for the foundation of two other church 
organizations, which are now in successful opera- 
* tion. The mission enterprise instituted by Elder 
James Greacen in Orange Valley, was in existence 
when Mr. Hoyt was settled among us. After his 
settlement a commodious chapel was erected, at an 
expense of $3,500, on ground donated by a mem- 
ber of this church, and on November 1st, 1859, was 
conveyed by him to " The Trustees of the Orange 
Valley Church," and " to their successors in office 
for ever." Upon the completion of the chapel, and 
before a religious society was organized, the Rev. 
Dr. Ilaj^ who was then a resident of Orange, was 
selected as a stated supply to preach the Gospel to 
those whom he might collect together, the seats being 



DISCOURSE. 163 

free to all. Ilis success in collecting a congregation 
was such that, in the spring of 1860, those living in 
the vicinity of the chapel, and all others desirous to 
unite in the organization of a church, and who 
had contributed anything to the enterprise, were 
invited to assemble for the purpose of effecting an 
organization. Upon taking a vote, it was found 
that the majority was in favor of a church after the 
Presbyterian form of government, and the meeting 
adjourned with the understanding that the society 
should be Presbyterian. A large and influential 
minority favored the Congregational. The merits 
of the two systems were thereupon made the 
subject of further discussion, at a meeting called 
subsequently to reconsider the former vote, but 
without essentially changing the sentiments of the 
majority, until it was urged that if the society 
became Presbyterian, and its workings in the 
future made it desirable to change to the Congre- 
gational form, the Presbytery would interpose such 
difficulties as to render a change almost impossible. 
This consideration influencing the minds of many 
in the majority, who were not sufficiently familiar 



164 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

with the Presbyterian system to discover its fallacy, 
led to the perfection of their organization as the 
First Congregational Church of Orange. Twenty- 
eight of our members took their letters to the new 
church. It has been in successful progress since 
that time. Two years since a large and ornate 
church edifice was erected on the ridge to the 
east of the chapel, where the congregation now 
worship. The Sabbath school and prayer meet- 
ings of the church have continued to be held in the 
chapel until two months since, when it was sold to 
the Romanists. It is now the Roman Catholic 
Chapel of " Our Lady of the Valley," much to the 
disappointment of those in this church who gave 
their sympathies and willing aid to the self-deny- 
ing efforts of our brother Greacen, and to the grief 
of those in the vicinity who contributed of their 
limited means for its erection. Thoufrh their con- 
tributions were relatively small, the Master, who 
commended the Avidow's mite, may have regarded 
them as " more " than those furnished from abun- 
dant resources. 

The Central Presbyterian Church was organ- 



DISCOUBSE. 165 

ized in January, 1867, seventeen of our number 
taking their letters for the purpose. There were 
many excellent members of both the Presbyterian 
churches in Orange whose former associations and 
sympathies had always been with those of the 
other branch of the Presbyterian church, but who, 
upon settling in Orange, united with our churches 
and cordially gave to them their active co-opera- 
tion. We remember them and their Christian 
work with us with fraternal affection, and we give 
them now, as we ever shall, our heartfelt " God 
bless you " in their work. The rapid increase of 
our population led them to believe that the time 
had arrived for another church, and efforts were 
instituted to that end towards the close of the year 
1866. The inception of this measure, which we 
now recognize as, under God, an abundant suc- 
cess, became the source of great mental anxiety 
to our pastor. Not that he was unwilling to see 
the church enlarge its borders, and put forth new 
efforts to extend the blessings of its influence, 
for few ministers have a spirit more liberal and 
catholic than was possessed and uniformly exhib- 



166 FIRST CHURCn, ORANGE. 

ited by him ; but because be was not so informed 
of the movement, as to form an estimate of his 
own hold upon his congregation, and the stability 
of his relations to it. Naturally reticent and 
hesitating to confide to others his anxieties, and 
thereby kept in ignorance of the true animus of 
the enterprise, he magnified it into one which 
might mar the welfare of the church which he so 
much loved. "I don't know," said he to one, 
" that almost all my elders may not go out from 
me." It was unknown to any of his friends, or to 
his church officers, though it is known now, that 
for three weeks before his death his mind was 
intensely agitated. 

Notice was given in the local and New York 
papers that religious services after the Presbyte- 
rian order would be held in Central Hall on Sab- 
bath morning, December 16, and every Sabbath 
thereafter. Sickness in our minister's family had 
led him early in the week to arrange an exchange 
with the Rev. Dr. Poor, of Newark, for the Sab- 
bath. On the evening of Saturday, after dark, he 
received a message from the doctor that he was 



DISCOURSE. 167 

confined to his bed by sickness, and would be 
unable to preach for him. It may be readily 
imagined that this announcement sadly disap- 
pointed bim. A break was to occur on the mor- 
row among his people ; he knew not the extent of 
it, nor its consequences ; and now, on the eve of 
this crisis Sabbath, he was left without any prepara- 
tion for the services of the day. Having selected 
from the material he had on hand, a discourse 
from the text, " Will ye also go away?" he left his 
house to visit one of his elders, with whom he 
remained until after ten o'clock. This elder bears 
testimony to his nervous state of mind, and the 
exaggerated view which possessed him in regard 
to the condition of his church. lie returned late 
to his house, quieted somewhat by the conversa- 
tion of the evening, and retired to bed, when he 
was soon after stricken with apoplexy, which so 
speedily terminated his life. 

The Sabbath morning opened with a driving, 
blinding snow storm. At the hour of worship, his 
people who assembled at the church, and those 
who, for the first time, passed its open doors to 
worship under other auspices, met to hear the 



168 FIRST CHURCE, ORANGE. 

startling announcement that the pastor was dying. 
The occasion was profoundly impressive. The 
hand of God was manifest, though we could not 
read Ilis purposes. As the dreary, storm-shrouded 
hours of the Sabbath wore away, the mortal part 
of the pastor wore out with them, and in the 
evening twilight the bell tolled the requiem of 
his spirit translated from the storms of earth to 
the brightness and the rest of heaven. 

Do we adequately estimate the keen sensibilities 
which possess the heart of a church pastor ? I 
notice a coincidence very significant, if not illus- 
trative. "When Mr. White died, (he was attacked 
witli apoplexy, and died in twenty minutes), the 
last of his intelligent acts was the reading, in the 
daily paper, a notice of the meeting of Presbytery 
for the installation of his successor ; and so the 
last intelligent conversation of pastor Iloyt related 
to the going out of those to whom he had preached 
and for whom he had prayed, to receive the minis- 
trations of another. 

Ilis remains were borne to their resting place 
in Rosedale Cemetery, followed by his stricken 
people, and by his associates in the ministry from 



DISCOURSE. 169 

this and other neighboring towns. The beautiful 
apostrophe of his accomplished co-presbyter,* as 
the mortal part of our pastor was lowered into the 
sepulchre, forms a fitting close to my discourse on 
this occasion : 

" Farewell, precious remains of our departed 
friend and brother ! farewell, till we meet you 
again at the glorious resurrection of the just. 

" He was a brother beloved, a minister able and 
devoted, a Christian marked with a true simplicity 
and godly sincerity ; and fearful to us as was the 
shock of our sudden bereavement, it was well for 
him. Sad, weary and anxious, with burdened 
heart and bursting brain, he laid himself down 
upon his bed. In the unconsciousness of slumber, 
all heaven's glory flashed upon him through its 
opening gates, and he went up — 

' Not slain, but caught up as it were, 
To meet his Saviour in the air.' 
' And O how bright 
Were the realms of light, 
Bursting at once upon the sight.' 

"Farewell, dear sainted spirit! Thou hast fought 

* Rev. Dr. Stearns. 
11 



170 FIRST CHURCH, ORANGE. 

a good fight. Thou hast finished thy course. Thou 
hast kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up 
for thee a crown of righteousness. 

" * And I heard a voice from Heaven,' says an 
apostle, ' saying unto me, write ' Blessed are the 
dead who die in the Lord from henceforth.' 
* Yea,' saith the spirit, ' that they may rest from 
their labors, and their works do follow them.' " 



f.. 



PPLEMENT 



The church and congregation so suddenly and so 
unexpectedly bereaved, were taught a lesson which 
still abides. It was humbly accepted by them. 
In their subsequent efl^brts for the welfare of the 
church, and in the selection of another pastor, they 
have relied upon the smiles and the guidance of 
Him who in His divine sovereignty " putteth down 
one and setteth up another," doubting not the 
wisdom of His purposes. 

Without delay an efl:brt was initiated to raise a 



SUPPLEMENT. 171 

fund for the benefit of the surviving family of the 
deceased pastor, which amounted to Five Thousand 
Dollars ; One Thousand of which were cordially 
contributed by those who were leaving the con- 
gregation, for the formation of the new church. 
A mural tablet to the memory of Mr. Hoyt, was 
erected in the church, according to a resolution 
adopted at the annual parish meeting, held in the 
month of April succeeding his death. At the 
anniversary exercises it was also announced that an 
order had been given for the erection of a suitable 
monument over his remains in Rosedale Cemetery. 
The Central Presbyterian Church, the corporate 
title of the new organization, was formed on the 
20th of January, 1867. To the original number 
(seventeen) who received letters of dismission, none 
have since been added from this church. Their 
loss to our church was estimated less by their 
number than by the esteem in which they were 
held, and by the influence they had exerted 
through their earnest christian co-operation, and 
by their material aid in promoting the interests of 
the congregation. The Rev. Edward D. Yeomans, 
D. D., was called to the pastorate, from Rochester, 



172 FIRST CnUBCn, ORANGE. 

]Sr. Y., and was installed on the 2d of July in 
the same year. A few months after his settle- 
ment, his health failed him, and on the 26th of 
August, 1868, he was suddenly removed by death. 
The church soon united in a call to the Rev. 
Alfred Yeomans, of Bellefont, Pa., a brother of 
the deceased pastor, who accepted the call, and was 
installed on the 9th of February, 1869. The con- 
gregation thereafter purchased a manse and lot 
adjoining, at a cost of $20,000, and have erected a 
chapel at a cost of $15,000, where they now worship 
— the chapel forming an integral part of a plan for 
a complete church edifice to be hereafter erected. 
The present membership is about one hundred. 
The most cordial christian relations have character- 
ized the intercourse of the two churches, cemented 
as they now are by the re-union of the two branches 
of the Presbyterian Church, now substantially 
accomplished. 

The Rev. Eldridge Mix, a native of Atwater, 
Ohio, was installed as successor of the late Mr. 
Hoyt, on the 7th of October, 1867. His preliminary 
studies were prosecuted first at "Western Reserve 
College, and subsequently at Williams College, 



SUPPLEMENT. 173 

where he graduated in 1854. He pursued his theo- 
logical studies two years in Union Seminary, N. Y., 
and one year in Andover, where he graduated in 
1860. He was soon after associated with the Rev. 
T. S. Hastings, D. D., in the pastorate of the 42d 
street and Carmine street Presbyterian Churches, 
in New York. The arrest of commercial enterprise, 
consequent upon the outbreak of the civil war, led 
to the abandonment of the church organization in 
Carmine street, thus releasing him from the service 
of those churches. He was thereupon called to the 
First Congregational Church in Burlington, Ver- 
mont, which he served as its pastor, for five years, 
and until he was called, by a very harmonious vote, 
to the pastorate of this church. 

The present membership of the church is three 
hundred and fifty-seven. 

The officers are as follows : 

PASTOR : 

ELDRIDGE MIX. 

RULING ELDERS: 
JONATHAN S. WILLIAMS, WILLIAM H. DAYTON, 

SMITH WILLIAMS, EDGAR P. STARR, 

CHARLES R. DAY, HENRY N. BEACH, 

STEPHEN WICKES, DAVID H. McCOY, 

IRA HARRISON. ANDREW MASON. 



174 FIRST CnURCn, ORANGE. 

DEACONS : 
GEORGE LINDSLEY, CHARLES N. WHITE, 

HORTON D. WILLIAMS. 

TRUSTEES: 
HENRY A. HOWE, Pres., GEORGE LINDSLEY, 

FRANCIS BACON, Sec, JOSEPH W. STICKLER, 

STEPHEN T. SMITH, Treas., OLIVER S. CARTER, 

JAMES H. HEROY. 

The Sunday School numbers — scholars, 356 ; 
officers and teachers, 32. Total, 388. Edgar P. 
Starr, Superintendent. 

The contributions to benevolent objects, during 
the last two years, exclusive of the current ex- 
penses of the church, have been as follows : 1867, 
$2,887 75 ; 1868, $3,554 00 ; Total, S6,441 75. 




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